How many sheep does it take to spin a batt? Who knows! Let’s look at a question that is much easier to answer. How many passes through a carder does it take to get a homogenous mixture?

Starting with equal parts black alpaca roving and white merino roving (about half an ounce each) we passed them through the carder together, alternating chunks of black and white, and then split the batts and passed them through in pieces until we had a batt that was mostly consistent all the way through.

Three passes did a pretty good job at making a consistently colored batt, with a fourth pass making it much more homogenous. One of the great aspects of Strauch carders is how gentle it is with fiber. After being passed through FOUR times, the fiber still looked nice, and not nepped up. If you look below at the finished batt, along with the two initial fibers, you can see the nice 50/50 blend created a lovely charcoal grey.

Try your own carding experiments, and share them with us on social media using #strauchfiber.