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  • Home
    • How I Started Handspinning
  • Spindles
    • Make Your Drop Spindle
    • Types of Drop Spindles
    • How to Use a Drop Spindle
  • Wheels
    • Selecting the Right Spinning Wheel
    • Spinning Wheel Styles
    • How The Spinning Wheel Works
    • Parts of the Spinning Wheel
    • Adjusting The Spinning Wheel’s Tension
    • Drive Ratios & Twist Per Inch
    • Spinning Wheel Maintenance
  • Techniques
    • Handspinning Woollen and Worsted Yarn
    • Preparing to Handspin Yarn on the Spinning Wheel
    • Basic Handpinning Techniques
    • Adding More Fiber When Handspinning Yarn
    • Plying Yarn with a Spinning Wheel
    • Navajo Plying
    • Making A Skein of Yarn With A Niddy Noddy
    • “Setting In The Twist” Of Handspun Yarn
  • Fiber Prep
    • How to Wash Your Fleece
    • Types of Fiber Preparations for Spinning
    • How to Prepare Fiber with Hand Carders
    • How to Prepare Fiber With a Drum Carder
    • How to Prepare Fiber With Dutch Combs
    • How To Prepare Fiber With a Flicker Carder
    • How to Use a Diz
  • Fiber
    • Alpaca
    • Angora
      • How to Care For Your Angora Rabbit
    • Flax
    • Llama
    • Mohair
    • Silk
    • Wool
  • Dyeing

Types of Fiber Preparations for Spinning

Fiber preparation can be done at home with handcarders or a drumcarder for small amounts of fiber. For larger amounts, you can send the fiber to a professional mill to have it cleaned, carded, and combed. Carded fibers from a mill are called batts, rovings, or slivers. Combed fibers are called tops.


Carded Fibers

Carded Fibers produce soft, lofty, woollen yarns suitable for knitting.

Batts are large, soft, rectangular forms of wool. Putting layers of wool through a drumcarder several times, will produce small batts of fiber.

Slivers (commercial) are ready-to-spin strips of fiber. Slivers can also be made from handcarded or drumcarder fiber.

Rovings are similar to slivers but a little smaller in size.

Pencil Rovings have the width the size of a pencil, and are already pre-drafted for handspinning.

Rolags are small rolls of fiber that are carded with handcarders.


Combed Fibers

Fibers produce strong, smooth, worsted yarns suitable for weaving.

Combed Tops are the result of fiber that is combed to remove the short fiber and to keep the long ones. The fiber strands are always kept parallel to one another during the process. Tops can also be made at home, by using Dutch combs or mini combs and a diz.


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