Do you love spinning rolegs? Rolegs spun with a long draw are the path to bouncy, fuzzy, lightweight woolen yarns. These days there are gorgeous ones available from folks on Etsy, like the ones from Fellview Fibers or Leah Wild Creative. Those are two of my favorite roleg sources, and I will link to them in the show notes. But with a little practice, you can make them quite easily yourself. There are ways to make Rolex with a blending board or a pair of hand cards or even with a drum carter.
But how do you know what to look for when you're considering buying one of those tools? Today, I want to focus on hand cards and talk about the three most important things to consider when shopping for these versatile tools. Hello, dear Sheepspotter. Welcome to episode 125 of the Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love. It definitely took me a while to get the hang of hand carding.
For me, the secret was watching a lot of different people carding and then settling on one method that worked well for me. Everybody cards slightly differently, so don't be afraid to watch other spinners and experiment until you find something comfortable for you. And YouTube is a great resource for this. Carding is one of those things where there's really not a right way to do it. If you're getting results that you're happy with, you're doing it correctly.
There are many different ways to approach it. I'm going to link in the show notes to a video demo by Beth Smith that shows roughly the way I card since it was her technique that really clicked the most for me. As with any handheld tool, how well the size and shape of the cards works with your particular hands is critical to making fiber preparation as easy and as fun as possible.
So with hand cards and hand combs, which we talked about last episode, it's really worthwhile to be able to hold them before you buy them. If you have a local spinning guild, they might have some that you could try. And if not, try to get to a fiber festival with vendors who are selling different brands so that you can get a feel for them. The first decision you need to make is whether to buy cards with a straight or a curved back.
On some cards, the wood that the carding cloth is attached to is flat, and on some it's curved. These days, most have a curved back, but you can still get some with a flat one. I think Kromsky makes some. I prefer curved ones as they work best with my particular carding style, but your mileage may vary. So if you can possibly try out both some straight-backed cards and some curved-backed cards, that would be ideal, just to get a sense of which one is going to work best for you.
The next thing that you need to think about is the size and the weight of the cards. Size varies a lot from manufacturer to manufacturer, and some companies make scaled-down versions. These are sometimes marketed as mini-carders. I think that's what Schacht calls them, or student cards. That's what Ashford calls them. If you've got small hands, these might be a better fit for you, and I would urge you to go with what's comfortable rather than with what you think will get the prep done faster.
Because let's just face it, prep always takes more time than you think it will. So really, you just have to relax and enjoy the process. Weight is going to vary with the size of the cards and the wood used for the backs. Some wood is denser than others. And if your hands and wrists are at all delicate, size and weight will be things that you really want to think about. Carding can be kind of hard on your hands, and you want tools that are going to make the work as easy on your body as possible.
Next up, think about the shape of the handles. This also varies a lot from manufacturer to manufacturer. Manufacturer um different manufacturers uh shape their handles in really different ways and some are thicker some are thinner so again it's really crucial that you find the ones that feel best in your particular hands. Finally, there is the teeth per inch, or it's sometimes called TPI of the carding cloth.
So when you start looking at different hand cards online, which I suggest that you do before you go to a fiber festival and try them out, just get a sense of what's out there. There, you will see this abbreviation TPI. And TPI stands for how many teeth or pins there are in a square inch of carding cloth. This can vary all the way from 46 at the low end. I think Louettes standard cards are a 46 TPI, all the way up to 255 on some cards.
Those are mostly designed for cotton and really fine fibers like cashmere. Excuse me. The TPI you'll need is going to depend on the kinds of fibers you work with most often. The finer the fiber you'll be working with, the more teeth per inch you want. 76 teeth per inch is a good number for medium wools. I like 112 teeth per inch. I like 112 teeth per inch for fine wools. That's confusing that we use TPI both to mean twist per inch and teeth per inch,
all within our tiny little hobby. Interesting. Anyway, I like 112 TPI for fine wools, which is what I work with most of the time. And my cotton cards, I believe, are 208 TPI, and I would use those for cotton or for any of the super fine downy fibers like cashmere or yak or camel, any of those. I use my 112 TPI cards the most of the three sets that I have. So you want to think about shape, size, weight, handle shape, and TPI, not twists, teeth per inch.
If you choose carefully and you take care of them, your hand card should last you for many, many decades, really for the rest of your life. And they can be used lots to do lots of different things besides making Rolex. You can blend fibers with them. You can blend colors with them. You can spin directly from the cards. And as we talked about last week, you can even produce an aligned prep for worsted spinning, working lock by lock using just a single hand card.
So I hope this episode has been useful. If you're thinking about bringing some hand cards into your your life, do let me know. There is a dedicated discussion thread in the flock where you can comment and discuss this episode with me and with other listeners. The link is in the show notes, which you will find right inside your podcast app. So just open up the description for this episode, click the link, and you will be taken right to the thread.
If you have not joined The Flock, Sheepspot's free online community for inquisitive hand spinners, you really should. You will get access to all of the freebies I've created for the podcast, as well as several self-guided spinning challenges, our weekly spinning check-ins every Friday, and lots more. Join us at theflock.sheepspot.com. Darling Sheepspotter, that is it for me this week. Thank you so much for listening.
I will be back next week with the first product review I have done in a very long time. And it's going to be all about the Luet Mini Combs, which I have been wanting to try for many years, ever since Deb Robeson told me that she did all of the combing for the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook using the Luet Mini Combs. I have never actually used them. They did arrive the other day and I took them out of the box and I cannot believe how little they weigh.
I think they might be made of bamboo, but they're super lightweight and I'm really interested to discover how that is going to affect my combing process. So you're not going going to want to miss my tryout of the Luet Mini Combs next week. Until then, my friend, go ahead and spin something. It will absolutely positively do you good.