Preparing Fleece

I obtained this bag of sheep fleece about 30 micron, it wasnt that nice but decided to use it.
Firstly I soaked the whole lot in several buckets of warm soapy (detergent) water.


I then sorted it in about 150 gms lots and dyed each in different colours.
I was amazed at how the colour took.



The next process was to card it. So out with the drum carder and I grabbed a handful of coloured fleece, fluffed it out and layed it on the carder tray, turned the handled and the fleece lay on the drum. After several layers on the drum I lifted it off and layed it down on the table. I continued to card all the fleece and was amazed at the result.

My Drum Carder With Spun Yarn

Large drum carder






Mixture of pre dyed fleece
carded and then spun at random
Hanging out to dry.
"click on to see larger scale"

I have only just purchased this Larger size Drum Carded after selling my smaller drum carder.

Now I can fit more on it width wide. It was fun mixing the coloured fleece, that have been left over from my felting garments and accessories. It was a surprise to see how they finally ended up when spun up. This is the best time to add your metalic threads and colour plying yarns from your stash. If you microwave metalic thead when using the dyeing process, it is likely to loose its gold or silver to end up just looking clear. After being spun I wash and then rinse thoroughly, spin dry then dry in the shade. I find these yarns make lovely individual scarves on chunky needles with tassles. Look for these shortly at the Belligen Market.