My failed nettle-along

The lack of interest last year allowed me to slack off on the subject, and the nettles I gathered are in fact still on the rafters in bundles. I partially blame blogging as a difficult forum for debates and sharing, as well as my lack of expertise obviously.

As luck would have it, I’m now off the hook – Motherowl invited me to a Facebook group a little while ago, created by Allan Brown who has considerably more experience in the matter as well as a lovely video describing his process. In a very short time thousands of people have enrolled from all over the world, quite a few Danes too! So the interest is clearly there and I look forward to learning more. (even though I detest FB)

Continue reading “My failed nettle-along”

Getting there: Carding

Had I known how many years it would take to completion, I might never have accepted those first 5 dorset/suffolk fleeces, but here we are closer to completion than not, at last.

Every time I do a post about these, I also look for the original post, the very beginning of the project, and once again realize that it’s nonexistent. I got the first 3 fleeces before the blog began in 2012, so I never recorded the scouring etc. in here, the next two landed the year after, where I probably thought I’d already recorded it so thought nothing of it. Continue reading “Getting there: Carding”

DIY wool picker

While chugging away at my suffolk/dorset roving, I was thinking of the many plant dyed kilos of ditto upstairs, which has to be fluffed and handpicked to loosen most of the tiny plant particles embedded, before it can be carded into batts/rolags. And decided I needed help with that. If you don’t make that effort, the VM just stays in there or on the drumcarder, forever polluting the next fibers and the next.

picker16

Continue reading “DIY wool picker”