In which I ramble about batts and drum carders and the meaning of life . . .

I've been possessed of the desire to have a drum carder.
     I don't have fiber animals (other than the Maine Coons), so I don't have to process large amounts of fleece. I don't have a cottage industry with fiber (yet . . . but I'll come back to that!). I don't have a pressing need for a drum carder. I just like tinkering with fibers . . . different colors, different combinations of fibers . . . and my right shoulder yells at me for days after I use the handcards. So -- I want a drum carder.
     I've looked and looked online, and talked to a couple of folks voice to voice and a few others via email and such. I've read a great deal of advertising copy (some of it even well written) about a wide variety of drum carders. I've even looked at a couple in person. Not to mention lurking on forums that deal with drum carding, and going so far as to do a google search for books on drum carding. And of course, the inevitable (and fabulous) YouTube.
     The general concensus seems to be: take a class in learning how to use a drum carder, try different drum carders with the fibers a person wants to blend, and make the best choice possible given time and budgetary constraints. Well, let me tell you! Finding a class in using a drum carder is not as easy as one might think, given the constraints on my time at this point. The budget is not as big an issue, but may be after the first of the year (which is approaching with alarming rapidity) and in the event is not equal to something on the ilk of the Pat Green Supercard.
     My primary issue is having the equipment to produce batts suitable for supported spinning on Tibetan spindles (and eventually Russian spindles as well). So far, the batts I've had the best success with have been produced on Strauch carders (and one the batt creator wouldn't identify but said it's older and out of production, so in the privacy of my own twisted mind, I'm going to guess at it being a Pat Green Beverly -- mostly because that guess makes me happy!). I've bought some other batts, both locally and online. It may just be my skill level, but so far I've not had the degree of success spinning from the other batts on the Tibetans. 
     Which leads me to the next section of rambling . . . batts themselves. I've tended to approach spinning (and dyeing) in a more right-brained, gestalt, let it be what it is sort of mode. A kind of "hook my hands in sync with my right brain and let the left brain sleep for a while" process. I've had some really stellar (again, at least in my mind) results, and some not so wonderful results. The problem with that approach, I think, is that it makes repeating stellar results difficult if not impossible. Serendipity is, perhaps, not the best substitute for skill and planning. So I'm thinking that additional learning must take place; I'm just not sure how to speed the learning curve while minimizing the direct and indirect costs of learning.
     The other thing I've been struggling with during the "great drum carder debate" has been a sort of low-grade depression. Not one of those mind-bender thunderstorms of depression, more of a dull toothache depression, probably brought about by the amount of intense research I've done on drum carders, coupled with the holidays, coupled with snow, coupled with Dad's recent pattern of more "bad days" than "good days". 
     I was thinking about depression while I was out and about today. I did finally find a basket large enough for all of my supported spindles to rest in, and it was lightly padded to protect sensitive tips and 40% off. That got me happy for a minute, buying it, and even happier when it fit in the cabinet in which my spindles have lived, sort of one of those "kewl, it fits" things.Then the depression started grumbling for my attention again. So I just sat with it for a minute, and I think I figured it out.
     I've identified myself pretty thoroughly with my occupations over the course of my life. Put a lot of myself into what I was doing, and derived enormous satisfactions from my work; "whatever the job, big or small, do it well or not at all". Well, and good. When I decided I was done being a graphic designer, I got a graduate degree and became a professional therapist. I was a darn good one, and did it for a long time. When I decided I was done being a therapist, I revived an ancient teaching license, added some specialty endorsements, and took a whirl at teaching. I was darn good at that, but ran into some circumstances that required an abrupt change, so I went back to mental health counseling. Bad plan. And short-lived. I was burnt out when I changed directions, and I guess four years away from it was not long enough to ameliorate the burn out. So. Technically, I'm unemployed. And there's the pain. I feel lost . . . unanchored, or perhaps undefined. When I think about going back to what I have done, and pursuing any of those options until retirement, I experience an almost instantaneous tightening of shoulder and chest muscles, as well as an immediate drop in energy level. Even now, as I'm thinking about while I'm writing, I'm falling asleep at the keyboard; that's a dead give-away for me that my level of resistance about "going back" is incredibly high.
     Stay tuned . . . more late about batts, drum carders, and resistance.

In which the dirty alpaca fleece and I take a road trip . . .

I ended up with an alpaca fleece. It wasn't really intentional, and I never did photograph it. (That'll teach me, ba goom!) It was during a horse transaction that ultimately didn't work out well for me . . . and when it became clear that that transaction was another dead end road down which I had driven and wasted money, I consoled myself that at least I had quite a lot of dusty, dirty alpaca fleece that ultimately could be turned into something lovely, or at least perhaps something I could clean and card and sell off a bit at a time.
     Well. I have haunted the Ravelry forums about cleaning alpaca, and visited ebay numerous times for materials. I discovered that alpaca fleece needs to be skirted, washed and picked prior to carding and spinning. Okay, I figured I could skirt the dang thing on plastic in the kitchen, wash it in garment bags, and pick by hand. Then I unfolded the thing on newspaper, started picking through the clumps of poop and straw, and decided that dealing with it by hand would ultimately cost several thousand dollars (including surgery for my right shoulder that the doctor said I needed in 1996!); scratch that idea. So away to ebay to look for a wool picker (which I found but did not buy) and a drum carder (which I may yet buy!). That lowered the cost to process about three pounds of fleece to under a thousand dollars, and obviated the need for shoulder surgery. Still not much profit margin.
     Then the latest issue of Spin Off arrived, and I learned that (O! Frabjous Day!) there is a fiber mill in Colorado. Not only that, it's relatively close to me; since the suby gets 26+ mpg highway, and the weather was predicted to be lovely for a few days, away I went to call the fiber mill. In the process of talking to Andrew at SpringToo Fibers I learned that he could skirt and wash and dehair the nasty fleece for under $75 plus postage to mail it back to me. Snork, chortle, squee! Plus, if I brought the thing out to him, he'd give me a tour, show me the process, and evaluate the fleece.
     The appointed day dawned, and the fleece and I set forth. I knew sort of vaguely where I was going, and as it turned out, by the time I got there, I realized I'd been right by the location a couple of times. On the trip out, I was vaguely sad . . . the last time I'd been that far out that direction, it was with my now (thanks be!) ex-husband in the phase of trying to save our marriage, and hauling a horse (another horse deal that didn't work out so well for me, but at least didn't cost me money). I got to thinking about the losses of the last several years, and was somewhat weepy. Fortunately, the fleece was very quiet throughout the process, so I was left alone with my music and tears.
     Then I arrived, and in the face of the three rooms of SpringToo Fibers, each of which is festooned with bags and bags and bags of fibers in varying stages of being processed, my sadness went POOF! Andrew greeted me, gave me the tour (wow, amazing machinery, which of course I didn't think to photograph (apparently a slow learner) or to even ask permission to photograph (realllly slow learner). Then we settled down to evaluating the fleece. Very, very, very dirty fleece. (Still quiet, but very dirty). Then Andrew got his hands digging down in the box and pulled out clumps of fiber . . . and the fibers tore easily. The last time recently I saw that look on someone's face was when the sewer rooter guy said "well, the bad news is . . . you have a broken sewer pipe in your crawlspace." So when I saw that look, I was immediately grateful that I hadn't invested $1000 in tools and materials to make processing a dirty, nasty, damaged fleece a really costly nightmare. Andrew told me he could process the fleece for me, but that neither of us would really like the results, and if I was really lucky, I might end up with the most expensive ounce of Huacaya alpaca in the history of fleece processing. Sadness descended again.
     But the trip was not without benefit. I walked away with a lovely russet brown cria fleece, a bag of tussah silk and a bag of black diamond (for blending, you know!). And a Huacaya fleece on order to be washed and dehaired -- the most lovely grey color that comes out of the dehairing machine looking like a lovely rain cloud (I like the rain; others may feel differently) and which, when blended with the black diamond and some tussah, should dye up marvelously.
     And in the meantime, there is the cria  . . .