The Process of Wool

Left: Picking locks of wool into clouds.                                        Right: Bamboo and Mohair to be mixed in with the wool.

I washed this wool 2 years ago. It's been living in an IKEA-box under our bed since it was dry enough to go in there, just waiting for me to get to it. This week I had two night shifts, that promised to be quiet enough to get some wool picking done.

Wool picking is the process before it goes in the carding machine. Some wool is already fluffy enough to go straight in, but not this one. Firstly because it was the first wool I ever washed, so I was a bit hard on it and it felted in places. Secondly because this wool was not sorted, nor was the sheep wearing coats, so there's plenty of second cuts and vegetable matter. Wool picking is opening the locks up, so they resemble fluffy clouds.

After I had picked the entire box, and tricked my husband into helping me with it, I carded the wool. I own a Louët Drum Carder Standard, which is wonderful to work with. After running about 50 grams of wool through once, I mixed in some other fibers, like bamboo, firestar, mohair and nylon, making sure to measure up what I used for each batt and writing it down. Some of the batts I ran through the drum carder 3 times, others up to 6 times, depending on how blended I wanted the fibers to be.

These are 3 batts of 50g each, after the first run through the carder.

Now I've got a box full of finished carded batts under the bed instead of raw wool, ready to be dyed or spun when I feel like it.