The Importance of Carding

After a fleece is washed, there are several other steps to prepare the fiber for spinning. First, the fleece should be “picked”, which breaks up the clumps into wholly disorganized fibers.

The next step of carding aligns the fibers by passing them through a set of brush-covered rollers. The more passes through the carding machine, the smoother the yarn.

To wit, here is a picture of a fleece batt that has been carded once, and one of a fleece batt that’s been carded five times.

You get to guess which is which.

My method for carding is to further break up the picked fiber and feed tiny bits evenly across the drum.

Subsequent passes find me pulling tufts of fiber from the end of the prior pass’s batt and feeding them perpendicular to the axis of the drum, which further breaks the fiber clumps.

Five passes produced a very smooth batt. More “rustic” yarns can be done by carding less and having more lumps.

This fleece is from a Leicester wee named Emily.