Carding and Blending

Carding and Blending

Over the break at New Year, I thought it’d be a good time to tidy up our supplies from the Well Being Centre. I mentioned at the beginning of the year I’d made a start on the fabrics tub. I also cleared out the equipment tub. Which inevitably led to clearing out the main wool tub! Not surprisingly we end up with lots of scrap bits of wool tops from the classes, from wisps left over from projects, to strips which have got clumped or matted from being in the bottom of the box or shoved around during searches. I thought it was easiest to just bring home all the wool to do a stock check. I sorted it all into piles, starting with single colours which had just become matted, or pulled all to bits:

Then I made piles of all the small left over bits, and grouped them according to colour. Reds, oranges and yellows Merino:

Red, orange and yellow textured tops (made from a previous scrap tidy up, some of these are probably 5th generation now!)

There were purples, blues and turquoise Merino shades:


And lots of Merino greens:

I started with carding the single colours which just needed refreshing or neatening up, then moved onto blending. We had a few other supplies I could add in, and plenty of my own to add a bit of brightness or contrast here and there. I tried not to overblend them so they had good shows of colour rather than just making a new shade. It’s not that easy to see with the blues though! This is one of the batts made from the mid blues:

The mid to dark blue one with a few flashes of purple refused to be photographed as a batt, but rolled up is fairly accurate:

I forgot to photograph one of the green ones, but this mid-greens looks nice:

The orange textured batt looked much the same as it did before, but is now useable again!

And the Red, orange and yellow batts always look good:

I think the blue blends I took in have already been used and half each of the reds/greens 🙂

11 thoughts on “Carding and Blending

  1. It must have been satisfying work Zed – you’ve made something from nothing and got tidied up! The batts are lovely.

  2. Good job Zed! Now you can start with some “fresh” products and no clutter. Maybe a class project next time.

    1. Thanks, Marilyn 🙂
      if anyone else buys their own carder, I’d be happy for them to do it!

  3. It’s always nice to have nice fresh batts from wadded up wool. I need to do that with my supplies but that won’t be happening any time soon. They all look scrumptious 🙂

    1. Thanks, Ruth 🙂
      I’m sure I’ve got other workshop stuff which needs doing too, but I haven’t got another spare 3 days yet either!

  4. Thank you for sharing this. I am just learning and had a sort through of all my collections from projects. I felt my colours were always flat and boring. Now i know how to personalise them and make interesting.

    1. Thanks, Janet 🙂
      I find even blending just two colours gives them a lift, and the tiny colour differences make them look like they have more of a sheen too, must be a trick of the eye, or mind!

    1. Thanks, Ann 🙂
      I find it therapeutic too, something about the noise of the carder and lots of colours.

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