Who knew there would be rain in Kansas in August? This is NOT a thing to complain about, but it does kind of put a crimp in my outdoor activities. And my husband’s. He fished in a bass tournament Saturday, and got absolutely soaked. There was even water in his tackle boxes! You would have thought the plastic ones would be watertight, wouldn’t you? We spent a fair part of Saturday evening painstakingly – and sometimes painfully – hanging out dozens (hundreds?) of lures to dry, then more time Sunday afternoon starting to put them away. What does this have to do with knitting? Heh, heh. He will NEVER make comments on the size of my stash, even if it was large (which it isn’t). And I didn’t even count his lures! We discussed taking pictures, but didn’t do it. There are some things that just don’t need to be documented.

One of my projects for this vacation is to finally get the carding cloth replaced on my old drum carder.

Drum carder

It looks wicked, doesn’t it? I bought it, well used, 20 some-odd years ago (note to readers: see comments). I have used it only occasionally, but because many of the teeth are bent, it doesn’t do a very nice job. And since the teeth are quite far apart, it doesn’t to much for the fine fibers I like to play with. So I used last year’s Christmas money to buy new carding cloth from Howard Brush. (Very nice people! Scroll down that page for a pdf file on how to use a drum carder.)

Like a theoretical audience, it is much less intimidating with its clothes off.

Drum carder, unclothed

But what’s this??? The new carding cloth is much wider than the old!! Did I measure incorrectly? Order the wrong thing way back when?

Carding cloth, new and old

Well, evidently I rounded up the width measurement, and I’m not sure if the vendor accidentally sent me the next size up, or if they measure just width of the teeth, or what, but I’m not going to be able to staple it right back onto the drums. *sigh* It was going too smoothly. I knew, deep in my heart, there had to be a catch.

But it’s perfectly fixable, it will just take a little more time and effort. (I could adopt this phrase as my mantra.)

The next step is to decide the exact width for the ‘toothy’ section and for the edges. Then I’ll use some forceps to pull out lots and lots and lots of tiny little staples from the back, cut it to the correct width, and it will be ready to go.

Carding cloth, up close. The new cloth has much finer teeth, and they all point the same direction!

But somehow, after all those fishing hooks, I don’t think I am up to it just yet.