New book on Blending boards to tempt you
I am not sure how it got to be Thursday so quickly. It’s been a busy week since we last chatted. I was working on another post about demoing felting, but it needs more work, so that will be coming later. This week at the local guild, we had a social focusing on Blending Boards. My Kia is partway through her gastric surgery (one of the parts of the new parts was missing from the box, so next week?) The weeds are trying to outnumber the plants in the pots, so that has to be done; they are all looking limp from heat and lack of water, i have to fix that too. The last part of the huge fleece is finally in for its first rinse. Just to add extra excitement, I am still wiping out and having long naps at odd moments. Life is fun!
Since you probably are not interested in the gastric distress of my car, and are likely trying to tackle your own weeds and lack of water (although it keeps raining?) So, this will be a short blog, so you can go enjoy the weeding and fleece washing while the snowbanks are not here. Let me show you what turned up, besides blending boards and bags of bits of fibre, at the local guild on Monday.
Guild social with Blending boards
0.11) Ann making rolags on the blending board, 2 more blending boards used in the background
0.12)- Ann’s rolag is flaccid!
0.13) 4 of the 6 spinners are using drop spindles
Daisy brought in her new book: “The Spinner’s Blending Board Bible: From Woolen to (Nearly!) Worsted and Everything in Between”, by Deborah Held. Released April 2025, it is hardcover and has 136 pages, in English. (ISBN: 978-0811773676, if you wanted to look at it too)
1.1)cover of: The Spinner’s Blending Board Bible, from wool to (nearly!) worsted and everything in between”, by Deborah Held
This book was written for spinners, but felters may also be inspired by it. Anyone working with fibre has more options if they know more ways to prepare that fibre. Different fibre preps produce different kinds of yarn if you are spinning, and will behave differently if you are wet or dry felting. More options are always good. For felters, the fibre mixes that a blending board can create may inspire you. Probably a turbulent sea or impending stormy sky, even mixes of greens suggesting distant trees?
1.2) first 2 pages of the Contents pages
1.3) Chapters 3-6 plus appendices
Let’s have a look at the contents of the book to see if it sparks your interest. While I am writing this, Indigo (online) has an excerpt including the full list of contents (in case my new camera and I are still discussing visual acuity) https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/the-spinners-blending-board-bible-from-woolen-to-nearly-worsted-and-everything-in-between/c06b9a51-bd73-3adf-adf6-1d363cd16a3c.html
Here are the main topics covered (I have listed the contents of all of chapter 4, since it may be of greatest interest to felters):
Foreword
Introduction
1: YOUR BLENDING BOARD: THE ALL-IN-ONE FIBER-PROCESSING TOOL
- Breaking Down the Blending Board
- A Comparison of Tools Used in Fiber Preparation
2: INDUSTRY SECRETS: UNLOCKING THE HIDDEN POTENTIAL OF YOUR BLENDING BOARD
- Aftermarket Accessories
- Technique: Dos and Don’ts
- Smooth vs. Textured Preparations
- Working with “Difficult” Fibers
3: ROLLED-OFF PREPARATIONS: ROLAGS, ROLLED LOGS, PUNIS, AND ROLY-POLIES
- Rolled-off Preparations, Defined
- Rolling Fiber Off Your Blending Board
- Color, Texture, and Other Creative Play
4: BATTS AND CLOUDS, ROVINGS AND SLIVERS
- Batts
- Better Batts
- Make the Best Batts
- Layer Your Fiber in Thin Staple Lengths, Burnishing Often
- Remove the Batt from the Blending Board
- Make It a Double
- Make It More Woolen with Multiple and Directional Passes
- Directional Loading
- Recard Your Batt
- Make It More Worsted
- Carded Clouds
- Make It the Most Woolen
- Roving vs. Sliver
- Pin-drafted Roving
- Make Your Own Roving, Multiple Ways
- Hand-pulled Rovings: from a Batt/Cloud or Roll-up, as a Z-strip
- Diz a Roving or Sliver
- Diz from the Board
- Off the Batt or Roving
- Double-diz
- Make It More Worsted
- Creative Play with Color and Texture
- Flecks/Tweeds and Heathers
- Garneting for Extra Texture
- Make It a Marl by Stacking Your Batts
- Stripes/Repeating Colors and Variegates
- Color Blocking
- Gradients
- Vertical and Horizontal Gradients
- Individually Carded Gradients
- Scraptastic Sandwich Batts
- Fractals
- Fancy Farm Batt
- Bizzed Datty Bumps
5: UNEXPECTED WAYS TO USE YOUR BLENDING BOARD
- Bring a Braid of Fiber Back to Life
- Flick-card Locks and Line Them Up for Spinning
- Flick-comb Your Locks
- Diz a Repeatable “Combed” Top
- Wet Felting
6: CARE AND STORAGE OF YOUR BLENDING BOARD
- Keep It Clean
- Storage
Acknowledgments
Appendix A: DIY Blending Board
Appendix B: Comparison of Blending Boards Used in This Book
Resources and Credits
Glossary
I like that the book considers repeatable and totally unrepeatable ways to work with fibre. While it’s fun to do artsy one-off things, it’s also nice to be able to get a predictable effect and repeat it if you want to. There are two tables I am particularly impressed with, one on types of fibre prep and what they produce (with pros and cons)(I want to meet this author!!). And the other on the Woolen to worsted continuum. It’s an elegant way of explaining vocabulary. Which is a problem when shopping for the prepared fibre, you want what you thought you were purchasing to arrive. There are good photos of various ways to lay out colour to get different effects as well as photos that show how to use the equipment, including the diz.
Let me show you a few interior pages to see if I can tempt you to check it out further.
2.1--2.6) interior shots of the book to tempt you to go take a look at it.
As you can see from the list of contents and the photos, this book covers a lot of ground, not only in ways to make use of a blending board but also in the various fibre preparations and how they are different. If your library or guild picks up this book, seek it out and take a perusal. Even if you never find a blending board at a garage sale or make your own, there is a lot of info here in case you do!
3)Back cover
Also, you can absorb the info presented and transfer that knowledge to a drum carder if you have one, or have access to use one. You can lay fibre directly on the drum, diz off or make rolags. Even after a short-ish perusal and skimming, it has me thinking odd thoughts of trying things on my drum carder. But first, I have to finish washing the last of that giant fleece. Just how big was that sheep? And what was he rolling around in? That water is filthy.
Oh no, a big storm is coming through in consecutive waves this evening, I guess the weather thought that fleece was very dirty too and is helping with the rinse! I will hope the waves of the incoming storm don’t take out the power before I get this posted!!! (Ann may not be able to do the final spellcheck and find all the missing or extra capitals!)
Have fun! Stay dry, Enjoy Summer and Keep Felting!!
10 thoughts on “New book on Blending boards to tempt you”
Debbie’s book looks lovely – she has covered her subject well and included lots of good photos.
I don’t think it’s easy using a drum carder like a board.
The social looks fun – it’s great to get together with like-minded people 🙂
We could do with some of your rain in our part of the country – we’ve had a hosepipe ban imposed because of the low rainfall so far this year.
if i could save and mail you the extra rain i would do that! maybe a large bucket of dirty fleece left in the middle of the yard will draw the rain to you? its usualy the drying fleece that attracks storms here. i hope you get some rain soon (but not all the missing rain at once!)
Socials were fun, it nice to get together and have fun with others. i have been heading home early, i have been too tierd but i am looking forword to having fun again.
i liked the book, i think it would be helpfull for anyone with a blending board to give them more options using it. some of the considerations and ways of aplying the fiber could be used with a drum carder. it would be trickyer to use dowls to pull rolags off since the drum turns, but if less fiber was used on the drum it should work. i have used a paper towl core to extract a batt from the drum. i have also dized from a drum carder, Hand carder and blending hackle.
i hope your weather improves and you get to enjoy the summer fleece washing seson!
The book makes blending look mouthwatering fun. Thanks for showing it to us Jan.
Hope you get that fleece rinsed and dried sometime soon. It certainly looks as if you’ll have lots of liquid manure for the garden!
Ann
I couldn’t resist it in the end and I’ve just ordered a copy of the book from Amazon uk. Having looked at the Wingham Woolwork website for blending boards (https://www.winghamwoolwork.co.uk/wingham-blending-board-and-table-carder.html) I came across a term that was new to me – burnisher or reverse tine blending brush. So I googled that and came up with this post from Spin Off https://spinoffmagazine.com/tulle-and-tools-for-blending-boards/ which I think is very interesting for felters as well as spinners.
I’m going to stick with my drum carder for the moment, but I can see a large rabbit hole opening beneath my feet now. Thanks for the push Jan, I think!)
Ann
i am glad you enjoyed browsing through the book!
Glenn has been helping with lifting the wet strainer baskets and draining the stock tank. i have not been using the first soap wash water since the sheep seem to have been rolling in dirt and weeds which i dont want growing in the garden. i may try to set up a strainer to get rid of the weed seeds so i can use more of the water.
i hope you are having a fabulous summer and not too much or too little rain!
Oh my you bot it too!
there is often a brush that comes with the blending board. sometimes its a bristal brush that pushes the fibers into the board and other times its a wire carding cloth brush like a flick carder. the guild used a wier cat brush to help cleen their drum carder too.
thanks for the link to the SPin off artical its a good find!
read through, see what you can tranfer as suggestion you can use on the drum carder. i looked like her explanations of how it works for laying out colour could be uesd on both.
have fun and watch out for those rabits, with holes this big they must be huge!!
It looks like a great book and I hope it is one of the first books we buy with our new budget. we don’t have anything on that topic. It might be interesting to turn the drum a few times between adding layers to see how it effects the outcome.
It looks like a cool book. Always nice to see a different fiber subject handled well. The socials do look like fun.
An interesting book that seems to cover the subject well with beautiful photos too. Who knew there was such a science in the use of blending boards. My drum carder has for a while been dormant, once I clear the decks it may well be put to more experimental use. That said I’ve enough rabbit hole ventures in the wings without another 🤪
I hope you get your clean fleeces dry.
Thanks, Jan! It looks like an pretty good book. I have both a drum carder, and a blending board. I find they each have good qualities and then there’s the not so useful ones. I appreciate your fiber group working with it for our benefit!