I took a quick drum carding class from Sarah Anderson this winter and one of things she demonstrated was dizzing off of a drum carder.
I tried it and it’s fun and easy. Perfect if you love drum carded fiber , but don’t like spinning from batts.
You need a drum carder (mine is a Patrick Green Deb’s Delicate Deluxe), a doffer (the pointy ice-pick-looking tool) and a diz (I use buttons. I love buttons).
Build your batt. I did a quick striped batt for long color runs. Start by doffing just enough fiber to fit through your diz.
And thread it through your diz.
Start dizzing by pulling the fiber slowly but firmly through the diz.
There has to be enough tension in your pull for the fiber to run smoothly and steadily through the diz but not so much that the fiber breaks. Here are some tips:
The fiber will pull off of the drum in a giant spiral, like peeling an apple. The resulting roving is gorgeous, fluffy and ready to spin.
Use the exact same process to diz layered batts.
The roving comes off blended.
Fun, easy and a great excuse for me to buy more buttons.
Here’s something I figured out about storing my drum carder recently. It and all the carding tools fit perfectly into a big blue Ikea shopping bag – it’s the perfect storage solution for me. Everything in one place and the bag makes hauling it off and on the shelf where I store it easy.
Thanks so much for this great idea! I’m off to try it!!
Tha nks for sharing this neat technique!
Ooo I’ve done washers before, but I have way more buttons to chose from than washers
This is great, thank you. I had tried diz off my DDD a few times with no luck. This helps tremendously.
Off to card some batts!
I am totally trying this. Love the layered batt dizzing! coolio.
…and thus you filled my rainy day with glorious color and productive mutation of many odd leftover bits into gorgeous fluffy roving. Thank you thank you thank you!
I love dizzing off my drumcarder it seems to leave less waste on the big drum:)
Brilliant!