Woolybuns: A Pretty Pink Post

Since I pulled out my drum carder last August (September?), I've carded and blended several pounds of wool and angora, but always starting with wool that was already processed, either commercially or from my friends at Still River. And most of it was for felting batts, where neps don't really matter. But starting with the turquoise batts I did earlier this month, I was aiming for spinning fiber, which to me must be of very high quality. I'm pleased with my results, both with the one pound of turquoise and 10 ounces of natural white angora and merino, but again, I started with a very high quality merino top: that luscious stuff from Nick's Farm Meadow. Today was put up or shut up for me. Earlier this week, I dyed 8 ounces each of angora and cormo wool. With the amazingly warm temps this week, the angora dried in record time and I finished fluffing it last night. Time to see whether I could card it or slaughter it. While I really wanted it to come out as beautiful spinning fiber, I knew that if I nepped it up, I could still use it for a delicious felting batt, so that takes some pressure off. I weighed out equal amounts of cormo and angora, 15 grams of each. I fed the cormo in first, in very small amounts, gently fluffing and straightening it as I went. There's the batt after it's first pass through the carder. Looks kind of sad, doesn't it? But, again, I can always felt with it. Next step: I split the batt in half along the length, split 1/2 of that in half width wise, then separated that into two halves like a geode (am I explaining that right?). I then sandwiched about a 1/4 of the angora between the two geode like halves and carded, continuing that process with each 1/4 of the batt. The resulting batt, second pass through, still looking a little sad. Oh, well. It will make some glorious nuno felt. Then I fed it through as above for it's third pass through, knowing all the advice is make as few passes as possible to avoid those dreaded neps. This is what I got after the third pass through.