Ta-da! All two pounds of fiber dyed blue and dry. Now we come to fun part. Spinning them. And spinning them ASAP.
At the time, I wanted to have all this yarn spun up by mid-October, and I still do— (I hear the rustle of calendars as you look at the date. I can dream, can’t I?) It didn’t seem so difficult at the time, but the trouble was that my usual loyal, supportive G. P. Adams & Co wheel was full of silk. And I did not have time to finish spinning that project before I began the indigo. Therefore it was time to try out the two antique spinning wheels that my father bought. Scary scary. Two unknown wheels and a deadline. I started with the one that treadled best. 
This poor wheel had literally come to us in pieces and had been put back together by my grandpa. On its maiden voyage (ha ha) it behaved well for a while, then began throwing a fit. And throwing its drive band.
When that didn’t deter me, it decided to snap the single at any and every opportunity, and if it could snap the single about two inches after I had rejoined it, that was even better! Well, I couldn’t sit around and deal with it so I put it in the corner to think over its attitude and got out the other wheel.
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During the first week of August I was granted the privilege of having a very good spinning friend come to visit, and she brought her drum carder.
Behold the fruits of our labor.
And, not only did she bring the drum carder, but she brought some more Aussie fur, some llama, and some cotton for me! I was in fiber heaven with a marvelous friend to play with. (Thanks, Legossi!) Here are the cotton batts (the white) and some batts of from the Iowa fleece. They’re nice and fluffy!
The cotton batts were rather fun. Legossi brought lots of cotton from the inside of pill bottles. Some of it carded up really well, and some of it did a really weird sort of disintegrating lump thing. All in all I wound up with five or six of them. I’m eager to see how they spin up.
We did attempt a test to see if running the fibers in tip first, cut end first, or sideways made any difference. (In other words, after hearing that there were so many opinions I was dying of curiosity.) We found that, with this particular drumcarder, cut end first worked best. There didn’t seem to be much difference between tip or cut end first on the carding level. I don’t know how it would look on the spinning level. And we tried sideways and got a big mess.
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