Garden Girl TV: How to Card Angora Fiber for Spinning and Knitting

Patti shows you how to use hand carders to prepare your angora fiber for spinning. This video is available through closed captions in nearly all lanugages, so share with the world.

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FULL TRANSCRIPTION:




I have got my basket of Angora here and, I am just going to grab a clamp of it. I do not want to take too much.

I am going to be hand carding the angora and these are the Ashford hand carders.

They have a fine needled carding cloth here and what I do with the angora is I just start on the bottom, and I continue moving it across and filling in the rest of the hand carder.

Now, I do not want to use too much on the brush here and now I am just starting at the bottom and really transferring the angora on to the other brush here. And, the goal in carding and hand carding is to really line up the fibers together in a row and make them all in a row and make them all parallel to each other.

So, that right there that is the first pass.

Now, I want to keep doing it again. I like doing it at least three times, so when I have got a good quality fiber to start with, I can get away with just carding it and transferring it from brush to brush three times.

This is my second time and as I am going through, I am looking and I am being aware, okay, are there any vegetable matters such as hay or is there any kind of dirt or flecks of whatever that I do not want in the yarn?

So that was the second pass.

Now I am going to do the third pass and I am basically just starting at the bottom and transferring one brush to the other.

Now, see thats left pretty much small fibers. I want the fiber to be at least three inches in length and that will just make the yarn that much easier to spin and more uniformed and that just much better.

So that was the third time. I want to do it one more time and just get it really nice and smooth on the brush.

What I am going to do to take it off this brush to make a little roll lag is I am going to lay it down facing up,

And I am going to take the bottom fiber here that is not on the handle side and roll the fiber off of the hand carder.

And then put it aside.

For this baby hat, I really do not need that much yarn. So, I am just going to spin up enough for two bobbin fulls and then I am going to apply those two together.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• hand
• spinning
• wool
• angora
• fiber
• arts
• permaculture
• urban
• sustainable
• living

[lovinlocks]

You are the business. I am so encouraged here. Thank you.

[585judith585]

if you still make clothes with angora fur can you make a hat and glubs i would really enjoy it thanks

[spankses]

everyone cards differently.......angora doesnt need much more than a little 'transferring'....

[piafou63]

Hello,

Beautiful video, but I never card my bunnies hair for spinning : I only spin "as it comes"...unless I want to dye before spinning (but I avoid this with angora hair, most of the time).

It's perhaps that sheared rabbits need carding ? (Mine are plucked).

Frédi

[irina5575]

i thought when you hand card you are not suppose to be hitting the teeth on the combs but kinda roll over gently--you might what to look up the proper way to hand card--seemed like you were fighting with the combs

[Iccece92]

Fabulous! This cleared up a lot of questions that I have had. Thank you Garden Girl!

[celestialfarms1979]

@dankimforde It takes 3 months to grow a coat of angora long enough to shear... Compare that with 6 months for a Mohair or 1 year for a Cashmere goat!

[celestialfarms1979]

It takes 3 months to grow a coat of angora long enough to shear... Compare that with 6 months for a Mohair or 1 year for a Cashmere goat!

[cobainzlady]

thanks for showing us this whole process. just seeing someone do it is so helpful. better than reading in books.

[Sikros]

I'm no knitter, but this all looks so interesting!

It seems like a long process though, and I usually don't stick to anything unless I get instant results so I guess I'll never know the fun of spinning my own yarn.