Pilling while hand carding

[merinomamma]

Hello all! I am fairly new to hand carding. I have tried many different ways of loading my card. I keep getting small pills in the roving no matter how many times I card it. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? It always seems to be "rough" and not as soft as when I comb it. Is it supposed to be like that? Thank you in advance for your help!

[Ann @ frabjous fabrica]

Carded fibres are always "rougher" than combed.  This is because combing makes all the individual fibres lie in the same direction, whereas carding actually moves them around so that they lie in all different directions.  (Like combing your hair, or ruffling it up)

How much pilling you end up with really depends upon what it is you are carding.  Commercially combed fibres - what we in the UK call "tops" and I think are called "rovings" in the US - contain all the lengths of fibre staples from the fleeces, that is long fibres and very short or broken ones and all lengths in between.  It is these short or broken fibres which end up pilling, usually once the fibres have been spun and made into a fabric of some sort.  If you are carding straight from a fleece, it could be that you have a lot of "second cut" short pieces or broken fibres.

In other words I don't think you are doing anything wrong with the way you are carding, it's probably what you are carding.

I hope this helps.