Use your drum carder to create gorgeous yarn

Drum carders and stunning yarn go hand in hand! Have you ever wondered how you can create a hand spun yarn based on an inspirational photo? With a drum carder you can easily make your own beautifully blended sliver ready for spinning by “dizzing” straight off your drum carder. Kate from Ashford shows you how easy this can be done.

As with any new project Kate likes to sample before she commits to the full project of yarn. Here is how she created her sample based on a beautiful photograph taken by Kerrin (@kerrin_sigmo) who, as well as being the office administrator at Ashford HQ, is also an incredibly talented photographer.

You will need:

A colour inspiration photo
Dyed fibre in colours that are similar to the ones in your photo
A drum carder
A diz – I used a button
Spinning wheel

The good yarn drum carder corriedale fibre

Here’s how:

First Kate selected some colours of Ashford Corriedale sliver that were similar to the colours in the photo. She then blended some more customised colours on the drum carder.

You can find our full range of corriedale sliver colours by clicking here

Hint: when blending smaller quantities of fibre on the drum carder use only a narrow strip on the drum rather than spreading over the entire width of the drum.

Once Kate had all the colours blended to match the photo to her liking, she prepared her batt on the drum carder, feeding strips of each colour onto the drum in the order to match the gorgeous photo she selected.

Now for the fun part – making your sliver. You could remove the batt as normal, roll into a large rolag and “stretch” it out to sliver form, but Kate finds dizzing it straight off the carder works extremely well and is very quick.

The good yarn drum carder carding fibre and wool

The good yarn drum carder dizzing and carding woollen fibre

Drum carding process

Position your carder so you can access the back of the large drum, ensure the handle can turn freely (you can also remove the handle if you need to).

Turn the packer brush up and out of the way. Start on the right side (this works for me; you may prefer to start on the left). Turn the drum so the metal strip is on top, using the doffer pick up and break a piece approximately 1-2cm wide of the batt.

Using a crochet hook thread the strip of fibre through the hole in your diz. Hold your diz with one hand and grip the fibre close to the diz and gently pull through. The drum will turn as you do this.

Work your way across the drum to get one long continuous length of sliver. (click video below to play)

Wind your sliver into a ball and you are ready to spin!

The good yarn hand carding spinning wool on the drum carder with colour

Next, Kate spun her sample and chain plied as she wanted to keep the colours together. Then, set the twist (washing the yarn) and then knit your sample.