A Practical Look at the First Week

During the first week of setting up a small workshop for hand‑carding wool, the main challenge was not the technique itself but the rhythm of the work. After three days of carding two fleeces from a local merino flock, the forearms ached and the carding cloths needed cleaning every hour. The practical decision was to alternate between two carding stations: one for opening the locks, another for the final blending pass. That simple change cut the cleaning stops by half.

The second constraint was the humidity in the room. Wool fibres behave differently when the air is dry. On the fourth day, with the indoor humidity at 38%, the static made the fibres fly off the carding surface. A wet cloth hung near the workbench raised the humidity to 52% and the problem disappeared. It was a cheap fix that saved time and frustration.

By the end of the week, the output was seven rovings of roughly 200 grams each, ready for the spinning wheel. The tradeoff was clear: speed versus fibre alignment. The mechanical drum carder would have produced three times the volume, but the hand‑carded rovings had a softer, more even texture that made plying easier later. For a small batch of blanket yarn, that mattered more than the clock.

The week also forced a decision about the carding cloth itself. The medium‑fine cloth (72 points per inch) worked well for the merino, but a coarser cloth (36 points per inch) would have been better for the coarser crossbred wool that arrived on Friday. Swapping the cloths took twenty minutes. Next time, the plan is to prepare two sets of carding boards in advance.

These are the kind of small, concrete choices that define the first week of any hand‑process. No grand discoveries, just a series of adjustments that make the work repeatable and the results consistent.