Fiber Processing - skirting and tumbling

With the long weekend, I decided I needed to get some yarn spun. It seems every time I make yarn, I do it a bit different, so I'll show how I did it this time.

Step one, lay the fiber out on the skirting table and skirt (take out the big pieces of hay):



Weigh the fiber into two groups of 6 ounces. This way I have two bags, one for each strand for the plyed yarn.



Then I put each batch into the tumbler, this seems to really help get out the dirt and debris.



Inside the tumbler:



Out of curiosity, I weighed the batches again after they came out of the tumbler. I wondered how much dirt and debris really came out of them. Each batch lost about 1/2 an ounce. That's a lot of dirt for such small batches.

Next step, flicking and spinning. I'll put that in a new post.