Sadly, I’ve owned a drumcarder for about 3 years, but it’s just sat in my fiber room collecting dust.  Since the advent of Ravelry and my participation in the Friends of Abby’s Yarns (Rav link), I’ve come to have a renewed love for batts.

Almost as long ago, I participated in the Secret Pal 4 swap.  The swap partner who was supposed to be sending me things sent me one package before I never heard from her again (not even to tell me she was my partner when the swap was done).  Unfortunately, based on the package she had sent me, I don’t think she had bothered to read my filled out survey as the colors were all the opposite of what I had listed as my favorites.  One of the items in the package was a 4 oz. bump of dark, dark green merino with slight red and yellow streaks in it from Deep Color (who, sadly, no longer does any dyeing).

I spun up a little more than half of the merino to discover that it seemed to get even darker as I spun it, leaving me a bit disappointed.  So, I used the singles to practice chain plying.  Since it’s very nice merino, but too dark to overdye, I had thought I could pull out the drumcarder and blend it with something to lighten it up.  I found some tussah silk at Spunky Eclectic in a warm yellow color called Walking on the Sun and bought 1 oz.

Sunday night I finally got a chance to set up the drumcarder and play with it for the first time.  Here are the results:

The batts weight 2.75 oz. total, with 1 oz. being the tussah silk and the rest being the merino.

I had a lot of fun blending the fibers, although I was a little surprised to find out that it can be hard work.  I think I need to see about picking up a kitchen scrub brush for burnishing since my Ashford carder did not come with one.  I also need to find out the easiest way to clean up the drum and the licker as there are bits of merino and silk deeply inbedded in the carding cloth now.