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HAND PICKING |
Hand Picking is the second step in the skirting process. Skirting generally removes bellies, necks, eye pieces, topknots, and stained areas around the outside of the fleece. Hand Picking is needed when processing heavily contaminated fleeces. This is the removal of weed seeds, hay, straw, unscourable paints, thistles, burrs and a serious wool contaminant - small pieces of Polypropylene baling twine.
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SCOURING |
The Scouring process will not remove vegetation from your fiber. Scouring is done only to dissolve and rinse away greasy residue and animal oils. While a certain amount of dirt or vegetation can be rinsed away during scouring that is really a lucky by-product of the operations and not its primary purpose. Simply stated, if there is any vegetation or other contaminants in your fiber, it will still be there after scouring.
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| In memory of Carolyn Louise Wojcik Schroeder 8/9/1946 - 5/10/2011 |
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MACHINE PICKING |
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| Carla at Machine Picker |
This does not pick out debris, Machine Picking opens and teases apart locks of wool either in preparation for scouring or as a preliminary to further preparations. It is at this point if wanted that we could do the blending of other fibers.
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CARDING INTO SLIVER |
Carding into Sliver is a method of separating and aligning fibers in preparation for spinning. We use 2 inline Davis & Furber 58" carders to make a Sliver. A Sliver is a continuous strand of carded fiber.
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PIN DRAFTING |
The Servo Pin Drafter is used to make a Hand Spinners Roving. The Sliver is run through the Servo Pin Drafter. Roving is a continuous strand of combed fiber with fibers aligned.
| Ladies Of The Mill |
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| At the Spinning Frame |
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SPINNING |
Spinning is the process of taking one or more rovings and twisting them in such a way as to make the fibers form a continuous piece of yarn.
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CARDING INTO BATTS |
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| Charolette carding into BATTs |
Carding into Batts is a method of taking raw cleaned fiber and aliegning the fiber in such a way as to make a continuous flat sheet of fiber. We use a Patrick Green Carder that makes a nice batt approximately 18" x 38".
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CUSTOM HAND DYEING |
We use Pro-Chem dyes.
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