If I Were a Moonshiner, I'd Make Very Smooth Shine

Nope, I don't own a still. But I do like things smooth, so this week I've been working on my e-lectric Patrick Green Drum Carder, making up some exceptionally smooth, soft fiber.

Let's start with my recipe. I filled up my little green produce cartons with half an ounce of dark black alpaca and half an ounce of super super soft angora. Look how shiny the black alpaca is.

You might wonder how I decide how much yarn I'm going to make, and I have to admit, I follow a pretty simple rule of thumb on that. I find my fiber and I consume it all. So in this case, I had 3 big hanks of this black alpaca, so that's how much alpaca I carded. I have tons of the white angora, so I just consumed what I needed to deal with all the alpaca.

I experimented a little on blending and tried putting all the black down and then all the white, but I didn't like the effect, so I settled on this - lay down some alpaca, top it off with angora, and lay another layer of alpaca on top. It goes through the carder easier if you don't have the angora all by itself.

Here's how it looks all carded up, before I pull it off into rolags:

And here are the rolags. Not all of them... by the time I took this picture I had already started spinning up the yarn:

Living in a male-dominated house, I do have to make some concessions about how best to display my completed work:

Here's how it looks as I'm spinning it. It is sooo soft. Very soothing for the soul.

And here's a closeup.

At this point, all the yarn is single ply. I could ply it to itself, but I'm thinking of making up a batch of 75% white angora, 25% white wool. Let me know what you think!