Look what I adopted

Following a hot tip (tweet, actually) from sockpr0n, I was able to snap up this little fella for not too much dough.

It is an 8 inch wide Clemes and Clemes drum carder. I am particularly enamored by the fact that Clemes and Clemes is literally up the street from me, so it is like the drum carder is coming back home. It is certainly well loved, and it arrived with one of the wooden gears cracked and broken. I was able to not only wood glue that back together, but eventually replace it with a stronger acrylic piece and get down to business…

I have been very satisfied with the batts I have purchased from Hobbledehoy and Stickyfingers on etsy. But in general I want a batt to have a blend of different types of fibers and not contain any sparkle and/or angelina. I’m not in it just for the colors; I have some specific textures in mind. Because of this I have been coveting drum carders for some time now (in fact nearly exactly one year), but they just haven’t been in my budget. So as soon as my little carder was running, I made a tiny batt of merino and mohair that resulted in this:

It was pure fun to spin…..
Next, I was FINALLY able to add camel down to some merino (I have had this camel down lying in wait for YEARS).

I am also excited to use it to process some of the fleeces I have piling up. It has done an awesome job with all of the Romney that I fed it:

More fun blends to come – I am ready to try a little colored fiber experimentation…