Dear Yarn Harlot

Dear Yarn Harlot,

I read your blog today and was intrigued by your mentioning in Judith MacKenzie McCuin's class, she said you should always add fiber to the drum carder sideways. I must admit I was thinking somebody, somewhere must of had too many of those little bottles on the airplane???
Nevertheless I decided to give 'er a try.

First of all, when adding fiber to the drum carder, I made sure I had pulled out my fibers thin enough to be able to see through to the tray. ( Drum Carding 101-If what your adding is too thick, you'll get a wadded up mess on your DC! Errrr-guess how I know this?)

Guess what? Maybe Judith is onto something? The fibers miraculously straight their little selves out, and I got a more even coverage this way! Go figure? I found my DC didn't bog down as much either. I just kept adding fiber, cranking away. It was a most pleasant experience at 4am. So much so, that at 6am, I'm blogging about it! Thanks for the tip there Yarn Harlot!

Drum roll, please...... And for your viewing pleasure....My sideway carded batt! (Of course I added some Angelina....I'm on an Angelina kick!)

Well, Ok...if it works so well for the DC...what about my hand carders? So there I went and lashed on some fiber sideways. Sure felt funny doing it this way! I kept waiting for someone with a ruler to come along and smack my hands!

But just like the DC, the carding on the HC went very smoothly, and I got excited! See...there's this Churro fleece with 6 inch staples that is difficult to HC due to the very long fly away fibers....Hmmmm!

As you can see from the pic, the little fibers magically line theirselves up. The carding was very effortless, and almost perfect after the first carding. (I did it twice....I'm OCD that way!)

From that I got my cute little rolrag! I must confess...I feel rather accomplished and may just never go back to carding my fiber from the ends again. Final jury will be out until I spin up my sideway carded goodness! (Hey, it's 6:30am, and I'm sleepy now!)

In closing, I would like to thank you for your pearls of wisdom! Your blogging has encouraged me, made me laugh, and turned me into the biggest fiber tramp there is!!! I have no less than 4 big boxes of fiber piled up in my room. Also about 6 big boxes of yarn. While I was once content to just own a set of knitpicks Options, now I have 2 spinning wheels, a drum carder, and more knitting needles that I could possible ever need! If that wasn't enough, now I want to weave! (Ok, I can't personally blame for that one!)

Your Sister in Fiber,

Mary