Loose Ends

Making a DIY Blending Board: Part 1

Despite loving the natural tones of wool, I also enjoy playing around with colour. There are lots of options to blend colours for spinning, felting or weaving:

Spinning different rolags end to end or drafting two colours together
Blending on hand carders
Using a blending board
Using a drum carder

All these methods have their pros and cons depending on what effect you want to create. Hand carders are cheaper, but only produce one rolag at a time. Drum carders can produce textured batts that are lovely to spin from, but are very expensive. Blending boards can create both rolags, roving and mini batts, but are also quite pricey. Being on a tight budget I decided I would have a go at DIYing a blending board for less than half the price of a new one with some added extras.

The basics you will need:

30x30cm Carding cloth (I purchased mine here)
A wire slicker dog brush
A wooden tray or chopping board larger than 30x30cm
A staple gun or screws
A round dowel or a pair of long chunky knitting needles

Disclaimer-Please consider your safety and use common sense when working with the above equipment.

Basic Building:

For my board, I salvaged an old wooden tray that belonged to my great grandmother and was sitting on the firewood pile. It was quite scratched and in need of some TLC, so I sanded it down and finished it with some oil. You could also use an old wooden chopping board.

When my carding cloth arrived, I laid it out on the back of the tray and centered it. Using the staple gun, I then put a staple in the top two corners and worked my way along the top edge. Making sure to stretch the cloth out flat I then stapled the bottom corners, before continuing to staple the other edges. It’s advisable not to use glue to adhere the carding cloth as it hinders the flexibility of the backing cloth and makes the teeth go rigid. If you don’t have a staple gun then you could perhaps use screws instead.

I purchased my dowel in one length, so I cut it in half so it was just wider than my tray as you need to be able to get a firm hold of the dowels when creating your rolags. If you have a pair of long chunky knitting needles lying around then you can use these instead of dowel.

At this point the blending board was perfectly useable and I (and my friends!) became impatient to play around with some acid dyed fleece I’d bought from a small business owner at a local craft fair (I’m not keen on acid dyes, however I haven’t had time to try natural dyeing and do believe in supporting small businesses). I do have some other customisations I want to make to it which I will post in a part 2 at a later date.

If you’ve never used a blending board before then I recommend Ashford’s ‘how to‘ video, however I use my DIY board a little differently, so will make a post about how I use it soon.

Happy Crafting!

Fibre Prep: Dorset Horn

The Fleece

The Dorset Horn was the first raw fleece I had ever worked with, so I needed to do some experimenting with preparation methods that would work best for me and were within my budget (whilst also being as eco-friendly as possible). My first job was to spread the fleece out on a tarpaulin and skirt it (see my policies section for my skirting ethos). The fleece was very clean with minimal kemp/VM and didn’t feel particularly greasy to the touch. The entirety of the fleece felt soft so in the absence of any particularly coarse areas, the whole fleece was washed.

Washing

Although my research described Dorset Horn as reluctant to felt, I was very cautious – I didn’t want to spoil it. I divided the fleece in two and gently placed half into the bath with hot water from the tap and some liquid soap designed for wool & delicate’s and I left it to soak for about an hour. After this I drained the bath and repeated the process again on the same half of fleece, after which I rinsed it until the water ran clear and it didn’t feel soapy on my hands, doing my best not to agitate it. I then pegged it out on the washing line to dry.

Once dry however, it still felt greasy and after running a small sample through my hand carders it was going to be hard work for them (and my arms!). I tried a different tactic for the other half of the fleece. Like before, I ran the bath with hot water but instead of using liquid soap I dissolved some washing powder into the water before placing the fleece in and instantly the water went brown, so it seemed the washing powder was a better emulsifier for the lanolin than the liquid soap. I repeated this process once more for the second half of the fleece, rinsed it and put it out to dry. When this wool dried I couldn’t feel much lanolin at all, so I re-washed the first half of the fleece once using the washing powder, which removed a substantial amount of the grease.

This process took me about 3 days and as with washing any raw fleece, produced a very organic smell (I found that the liquid soap produced a stronger smell than the washing powder, despite it removing less grease). By the second half of the fleece I was squeezing the water out during rinsing, so discovered that I could be much rougher handling raw fleece than I originally anticipated.

Carding

My fibre prep equipment consists of a pair of handmade 72ppi hand carders kindly given to me as a gift. Dorset Horn is quite an elastic fibre with moderate crimp and with a staple from this fleece measured at 3.5″ was easy to separate out and apply to the carders. There was minimal VM/kemp left in the fleece after skirting and washing, but most of what was left fell out during carding. With the fleece now grease free, carding was light work and produced very light, fluffy and bouncy rolags ready to spin.

Overall this process was easier than I expected, but it was more time consuming. Let me know if you have any tips/advice in the comments below.

Happy Crafting!

A Little About: Dorset Horn

**A Dorset Horn Sheep**
***Photo via http://www.dorsetsheep.*****org.uk**

History

Dorset Horn sheep have been around in the UK since the 17th century, making them one of the oldest breeds in the UK (although they were officially established in the 19th century at the time the first flock book was published). They have the unusual characteristic of being able to breed all year round and are quite hardy, so over time the breed was exported around the world. In the 20th Century the Poll Dorset, a hornless version of the Dorset Horn was developed in Australia. Without horns, the Polled Dorset sheep were easier to handle and so, when imported into the UK became more popular with farmers than the Dorset Horn, leading to the Dorset Horn becoming a conservation breed.

Fleece Research

After researching different fleeces, the Dorset Horn seemed an ideal starter fleece for me as I had never worked with a raw fleece before. It was white, so I had the option of experimenting with dye if I wanted to, it has a medium staple length (between 8-10cm*) so should not require as much skill/experience to spin, it could be prepped using most methods and is most commonly used for garments or homeware, so there were lots of options when it came to using the finished wool. Most importantly for me though – it is reluctant to felt* so I wouldn’t have to worry as much about spoiling a whole fleece by giving it too much agitation or heat.