How to Blend Fibers for Spinning

It’s easy to blend fibers with hand cards. If the wool is clean and ready to card I load it right on with the fine fibers. If I wanted to card a 50-50 blend, I load half of the paddle with sheep's wool and half with the fine fiber. As I turn the hand cards, the sides will change, mixing the fibers together. My sample here is 50% dark sheep’s wool and 50% Angora rabbit.  I used dark wool so that you could see clearly how it blended. You can use the same color if you wanted to.

When blending on a drum carder, I usually card each fiber by itself first to make it easier to handle. I tear off a strip of each to make the proportions I want and card them together. I pull off the batt and recard it several times to mix it thoroughly.

If I’m blending colors on hand cards, I might card separately each of the fibers thoroughly and then blend as much or as little as I like. The sample I did has a heathered look.

Blending colors on the drum carder is easy too, Sometimes I put down different colors in layers. Sometimes I’ll take the first batt and pull it into stripes. Then I lay the strips on their sides as I run them through again for a more striped effect. It is really fun to experiment and see what comes out.

Blending fibers on wool combs is a lot like blending on cards. However, there is a way to get the striped effect by using a diz. I recommended reading How to Use Viking Wool Combs for an explanation of combing and using a diz. You really need some sort of jig to hold your comb since you need both hands to pull the wool through the hole in the diz.

I experimented with making a jig that would hold both my combs so that it would work like a short hackle. I lined up the two combs side by side right at the edge of a sheet of scrap plywood. I put one nail through the hole n the end of the handles and one nail on either side of each handle. It worked pretty well though I did have to hold the handles down once in a while. There are several things I could do to improve on this design, but I think I'm going to make a set of hackles with a double row of teeth.

I lashed, or loaded, the combs with sections of different colors.  I started the diz at one end and by fluffing the fibers and pulling gently to one side, I worked the diz along the front of the combs. I ended up with a sliver that had different sections and strips of color. The video below shows how this works. It takes a little practice to get a smooth roving off the hackle.