Fat Yarns and Cotton Hand Cards

This is a spinning blog.... right? Well ok... not quite... but today I'm actually going to talk about spinning and knitting.
So my first day of the schedule was Tuesday and that day was spent discovering that my all purpose hand carders suck when carding ginned cotton. Cotton is a very short stapled fibre and it is also pretty lumpy bumpy when it comes in the ginned form... at least my ginned cotton is pretty lumpy bumpy. When you card ginned cotton the teeth on the cards are supposed to comb out all of those lumps and bumps. Mine did not do that and so I decided to actually count the teeth per inch in my hand cards. My hand cards come out at 64 ppsi (points per square inch). That is pretty good for carding cloth if you are carding wool. Cotton is a whole other set of problems. I decided that perhaps I should invest in a good set of cotton cards.

I have a friend in FSJ who sells such things and so I decided to email her and give her the business. She emailed me back with the information on the cotton hand cards that she sells. Ashford is a manufacturer of cotton hand cards at 108 ppsi which is good but I had learned that good cotton hand cards have over 150 ppsi. In light of that not so good. Louet who she also deals with manufactures their cotton cards at 60 ppsi... they don't even make it into the ball park.... so what do I do. Of course I call a friend in FSJ who actually does have a set of cotton hand cards, to find out how many ppsi hers have. She owns a set of Schacht cotton hand cards and they sit at a healthy 208 ppsi. I will be spending a day spinning with her and so I will give hers a try and see if I like them. At the same time that I was calling my friend I emailed my level 3 instructor and asked for her opinion. She seemed to think that the Ashford cotton cards were sufficient. She also gave some very valid reasons for not getting seriously fine cotton cards. Primarily her reasons were that the finer the teeth the more susceptible to damage that they are. She also felt that blending cotton with other fibres such as wool would limit me because the wire used on cotton cards would be too fine for wool. She also thought that 108 ppsi was sufficient when using them on other fine fibres such as fur, like bunny, or quiviet, or yak. This led me to a serious few days of research on cotton hand cards.

The results are as follows:
Howard Brush student sized cotton cards at 190 ppsi $55.00 (AMD) These can also be gotten in a 120 ppsi
Schacht cotton hand cards at 208 ppsi $81.00 (CAD)
Ashford cotton hand cards at 108 ppsi $63.50 (CAD)
Strauch small cotton hand carders at 255 ppsi for $61.00 (AMD)
Clemes and Clemes Flat Backed cotton hand cards for $72.50 (AMD)

I like the thought of having a set of hand cards that are more than multi purpose since the hand cards that I have now are considered that. I know I can card and blend fine fibres on the hand cards that I own. While the points that my instructor made are valid, I do want something that is substantially different from what I have now. Having said that, I am taking very seriously the points made on the fact that very fine cloths can be damaged very easily. I am hard on my tools.... enough said! So I think that the Howard Brush cotton hand card in student size meet my every need. I will purchase the hand cards in student size which is 6" because I have small hands (the only small thing on me except for my ears) and also because I want even distribution across the card with very little 'waffling' in my punis. While the Howard Brush cards have a fine carding cloth, it is not as fine as the Strauch or the Clemes and Clemes or the Schacht, therefore less susceptible to damage and lifting of the cloth when carding vast amounts of cotton. The Howard Brush sells theirs as "virtually indestructible" and hopefully they are.

Meanwhile I'm still on a fat yarn kick. I have been spinning fat yarns left, right, and centre. Louet has a lovely product they call Northern Lights. Northern Lights are lovely woolen pencil sized rovings that you can spin without drafting and ply together to get wonderful fat yarn in no time at all. I love it and for a product to sell at farmer's markets and craft fairs it is marvelous. I spin huge amounts of it in no time at all. The problem is that if I am going to sell the stuff, then I have to find tried and true patterns to go with it. Joe Blow off the street is not going to buy yarn without a pattern for it because most people who knit will not test the knitting Gods by chancing a pattern of their own with a new yarn they have never tried before. And so my search continues as I try to find fat knitting patterns that will suit my new yarn.... we shall see. Maybe I will have to develop my own.... hmmm.