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- #41
freemotion
Food Guru
It is pretty thick and dense. You will pack it down further by sleeping on it. I'd say it was about 2" thick and fairly tightly packed. The instructions said to NEVER wash it.
Spinning adventure
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Rebecka
Lovin' The Homestead
Wow! Thanks guys! This has been a very enlightening thread. I have always purchased my wool raw and then spent days cleaning the grease out so I could spin grease free. It never Ever occurred to me to spin it with the grease. So, I have spent the evening, snuggled up to my wheel with clean but greasy wool and I Love it! There is far less breakage from daring to go to thin for a short draft. My hands feel great and I confess, I really love the smell too! The only con to all these pros... The cats really really love the greasy wool. So I spend a good bit of time shooing them off.
Ohioann
Lovin' The Homestead
If you card "in the grease" you will transfer lanolin to the carder teeth. So... if you want to use those same carders for washed wool you will get a transfer from the carder to the clean wool. Should have dedicated carders for each type of wool. If you wash wool with a light amount of soap you can leave in some of the lanolin. If you use a lot of soap or a degreasing soap you wil "scour" your wool, no more lanolin....so you do have some control. The tags, dirty parts and sun burned ends (colored fleece) make great garden mulch especially for perennial beds. We use a lot of wool that way at our local historical society mill/farm and it works great.
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- #45
freemotion
Food Guru
I came home today with two heavy garbage bags of fleece! Unskirted, so full of poop no doubt....but lots of good wool, I'm sure. They were a gift from a sheep shearer that I sold my buck to this past spring. I found the buck's scrapie's tag and the guy's number in a pile of neglected papers, and called him up to offer to get the tags to him. He offered to pay me, I said, "Of course not! I'm in your area anyways on Monday, I'll drop 'em off." He offered wool, I jumped!
Haven't told dh yet..... They are in the trunk still.....
Haven't told dh yet..... They are in the trunk still.....
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- #47
freemotion
Food Guru
I was toodling around online, pricing new carders, and I found a place in RI that will sell me the pads with the wires so that I can replace the pads on my Memere's hand carders! For a fraction of what new carders would cost.
The question is, do I dare mess with these wonderful antiques? I am thinking yes....to use the handles that Memere used, pure bliss. And they likely have no real value to sell them, not that I would anyways. I'll think about it for a few days, and inspect the carders more closely, but I think I'm gonna do it....
The question is, do I dare mess with these wonderful antiques? I am thinking yes....to use the handles that Memere used, pure bliss. And they likely have no real value to sell them, not that I would anyways. I'll think about it for a few days, and inspect the carders more closely, but I think I'm gonna do it....
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- #48
freemotion
Food Guru
I found my grandmother's carders online. Apparently they are fairly common, and I saw the exact same ones for sale for anywhere from $2.50 to $20.00, the average price being $10.00. So this would cut the price of new carders in half for anyone out there who wants to get a pair of nice carders, essentially new, for half price....woohoo!
Niele da Kine
Power Conserver
Where online to get inexpensive carders? I've not even been able to find the wire replacement pads for anything inexpensive.
Oh, a drop spindle made of a CD may not weigh enough to spin thicker yarns, you could try it but it might be frustrating. If you have a big hole saw type drillbit, you can cut drop spindle sized disks out of bits of wood. The disks will even have a nice hole in the center to put a chopstick in. Or a bit of dowel. I got some scraps of local hardwoods, monkeypod and koa, from a furniture maker who lives in our neighborhood to make drop spindles with. They are a little heavier than if they would have been made with a CD and are a great weight for spinning yarns instead of thread. At the moment the only fiber I have is angora but I may be able to get some sheep's wool soon. It's supposed to have a bigger crimp and be easier to spin.
Oh, a drop spindle made of a CD may not weigh enough to spin thicker yarns, you could try it but it might be frustrating. If you have a big hole saw type drillbit, you can cut drop spindle sized disks out of bits of wood. The disks will even have a nice hole in the center to put a chopstick in. Or a bit of dowel. I got some scraps of local hardwoods, monkeypod and koa, from a furniture maker who lives in our neighborhood to make drop spindles with. They are a little heavier than if they would have been made with a CD and are a great weight for spinning yarns instead of thread. At the moment the only fiber I have is angora but I may be able to get some sheep's wool soon. It's supposed to have a bigger crimp and be easier to spin.
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- #50
freemotion
Food Guru
The ones I mentioned above were found in ads for antiques, such as ebay. I did replace the wires pads on my carders...it cost about $24. I must've posted about it somewhere else, since I thought I posted the link to the place that sells the replacement pads....
