Wednesday, June 14, 2006

I'm pleased to introduce...

The newest member to my spinning family - Geraldine, the Pat Green Fancicard!




I ordered the carder about 2 months ago and late last week it finally arrived - This is an amazing machine! It's quiet and fast and with one pass the fiber is lovely. I love that it's motorized and I can use both hands to feed the fiber, I don't need to change drums, and with a quick band change I can change the speed. It also came with a number of tools.



Here we have a burnishing brush (the large one), a felting brush, a doffer stick (the pointy metal one) and two wooden dowels - one of which has a plastic sheet attached to help in removing fine batts. The tools are just as well made as the machine itself.

Of course I got right to work - here are my very first batts:

From left to right: Merino/Silk, Merino/Firestar sparkle, Merino/Icicle Sparkle (if you view the larger pic you can see the sparkle better) - I am going to be having soooo much fun doing this! I started spinning up the middle batt (I actually have a few batts in that colorway) and you'll be seeing the results soon. If you have never spun from a batt before, you really need to try it. The batt is so fluffy and the sparkle is nicely integrated, drafting is a breeze. It's so easy to get either a thick or fine single....can you tell I'm in love?