hackle - leilani handmade

A person wearing a smartwatch sits at a wooden table, using a blending hackle to blend colorful fibers. Their hands are visible near the fibers, which are a mix of green, purple, blue, and shiny strands, all attached to metal spikes of the tool.

“Sandwiching” Fibers on a Hackle

When I was very young and learning to read, my favorite book was called “The Biggest Sandwich Ever,” in which a man enters a park and starts assembling a gigantic sandwich with everything you could ever imagine on it. I loved how this book rhymed, but most of all, I loved all the different types of food that were piled onto this humongous sandwich.

It’s no surprise that, as an adult, I’ve become a total foodie who loves cuisine from all over the world. I find this food theme even enters my jewelry and fiber arts endeavours, with many of my projects referring to or named after food. Everything reminds me of food! 🙂

I have nicknamed this hackle blending technique “sandwiching” because I layer many different types of fibers for spinning on top of each other, and repeat the process, “sandwiching” the fibers together before pulling them off with a diz.

A person holds multicolored, shiny fiber near a wooden blending board with metal pins. More fiber is spread across the board’s pins. The background shows a blurred room with art, books, and weaving tools. Light softly enters from the left.

Above: a mixture of Merino, Silk, Angora, and Angelina fibers forms this mini roving, pulled off my hackle with a diz and ready for some fun hand spinning!

Why Blended Textured Fibers

I love playing with color and creating unique handspun yarn. I get satisfaction in watching all the colors come together when spinning or plying yarn.

I know some people dislike texture in their yarn, and you can still do this sandwiching technique with just wool top of different colors to create a uniquely blended top, colorwise. Life’s too short for spinning boring fiber. 😉

Another reason to blend fibers is to create different strengths or structure in your yarn. Blending dyed nylon for a stronger sock yarn, for example, or adding in bamboo or cotton for its absorbent or anti-microbial properties. Adding in a luxury fiber, such as silk, to your project is always divine!

For me, textured blending is all about the uniqueness of my handspun. The unpredictability and unreplicability of the fiber are what make it enjoyable and motivating to spin. Although all handspun yarn is art yarn, spinning textured blended fiber embodies that definition in its entirety.

Hackle vs. Drum Carder

You can achieve similar results with a drum carder. With a drum carder, you will pull off a batt, whereas a hackle is used to create roving. I do find that the fibers on a drum carder can blend more effectively than on a hackle. I have a trick to this that I will share in an upcoming video & post, because when I am making textured fiber for spinning, I don’t want the fiber to be overly blended.

Watch: Sandwich Blending Fiber on a Hackle

Tips for Successful Fiber Blending on a Hackle

Don’t Overload the Hackle

It’s tempting to fill a hackle as full as possible, but from my experience, all this does is compact the fibers, making it harder to pull off with the diz. This results in a significant amount of leftover fiber, which you will need to either re-run through the hackle or remove in what I refer to as a “mini-batt” (demonstrated in the video). Because I want to preserve the chunky blending and have every roving match, I don’t run it back through the hackle.

Pull Roving with a Firm but Gentle Pressure

You will want to be firm and steady when pulling the fiber through the diz, BUT not aggressively. Pulling too hard only results in the fiber breaking on the roving prematurely. It also feels like you are fighting the fiber; much more resistance is created, and thus it becomes harder to pull. Not to mention this is very hard on the body.

In the video, you will see me alternate hands while pulling off the roving. Usually, I would guide the diz with one hand and pull with the other, but I have a bad shoulder and neck issues from being hit by a car years ago, so I find the repetitive motion of fiber prep and spinning exacerbates that injury.

Slow and steady is always the way to go when pulling a roving.

Take breaks when needed.

I am guilty of getting so into my hackle blending that I don’t take adequate breaks, resulting in some serious neck, shoulder, and back pain. It’s essential to find balance in tasks that require repetitive motion to keep them enjoyable; otherwise, you may wind up with repetitive strain injury and needing to visit the massage therapist or physiotherapist more often, or even worse, have to quit altogether.

Overall, a hackle is a versatile and generally affordable tool for blending fiber for spinning. See my other hackle post for general hackle use tips, and be sure to check out my YouTube Channel for more spinning and fiber inspiration.

Why I consider my hackle the most versatile tool in my studio for fiber prep

A wooden blending hackle with sharp metal tines is clamped to a table. Vibrant strands of yellow, green, and blue wool fibers are blended together, while a strand of pale blue wool threads through a round wooden diz. A wooden blending hackle with sharp metal tines is clamped to a table. Vibrant strands of yellow, green, and blue wool fibers are blended together, while a strand of pale blue wool threads through a round wooden diz.

When I started spinning, like most new spinners, I would purchase pre-dyed wool usually in the form of a roving. When I started processing fleece from raw and subsequently dyeing my own fiber, it was necessary to invest in a blending tool. I enjoyed my combs, especially my St. Blaise Combs, but you can only do small amounts at once, and with a bad shoulder it was really wearing out my body.

So I bought the cheapest drum carder I could find, and as you probably know, a basic drum carder will still cost several hundred dollars. I processed much of my raw fleece via combs and drum carder and blended some fun and colorful batts that way as well. I loved the drum carder for batt making, but I didn’t like it for processing raw wool. I felt that I should have a coarser cloth to do this.

Enter…the Hackle

Somehow, I stumbled upon a hackle, and I can’t remember where. It may have been something I saw online or from my frequent trips to Vermont. I don’t find Canada had/has a big fiber arts scene and I lived in Quebec at the time, so I could get my fiber fix easily south of the border in New England. Either way, I figured it would be a good solution to my dilemma, and thank goodness this happened before I bought a new carding cloth for my drum carder!

A person wearing large glasses is seated at a wooden table working with wool with a hackle blending tool that has a row of metal prongs. Shelves behind them hold various yarns and craft materials. The person is smiling slightly and wearing a dark sleeveless top.

I started using my hackle with little knowledge. Like most things I tackle in life, I like to have minimal knowledge at first so I can figure things out on my own. Honestly, I wish I had known about these hackle things years before. I think I would have delayed buying a drum carder (or not bought one at all).

There are two ways I like to use my hackle: for processing raw fiber before spinning, and for color/texture blending fibers before spinning.

Whether or not a hackle is a good choice for processing raw fleece and fiber would depend on the quality and texture. In the video, I am using raw alpaca fibers that, although unwashed, is fairly clean and not at all heavily compacted. If you have a really dense and dirty fleece then a picker and/or combs would probably be a better option.

For blending fibers, which is what I use my hackle for the most, I’ve never had any negative experiences, to date. Usually I am using roving or top that I have hand dyed so that’s a breeze to use with a hackle. I love the control you get blending on a hackle. I also like a chunkier – or blocks of color – roving, and that is easier to achieve than on a drum carder (from my experience, anyway!). You can always remove and re-blend fibers over and over again if you want your fibers and colors to be blended more evenly throughout.

How To Use a Hackle – Step By Step (My Method)

My disclaimer is, as a self taught spinner and fiber processer, I learned to use my hackle the way I found works for me. I’m not sure if this is the “proper” or traditional way to use one. I’ve always been one to find my own way no matter what I do. Hopefully this video is helpful to get you started using a hackle, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone disagrees with my method either. 😉

I appreciate that there are many ways to make traditional tools and methods your own in fiber work, and fairly inexpensively, as well! If you’re handy, you could construct a hackle and save even more money. That’s what drew me to the craft of preparing fibers yourself for spinning. So many ways to achieve what you want done for any budget, and the waste can always be repurposed, if only for compost for the garden. 🙂

In the video, I show a simple two-sided color blending, as well as an example of how I would process raw fiber to get it ready for spinning. I’ve taken a mental note to show more ways of blending color on a hackle, so hopefully that will be in a future video. But don’t be scared to experiment and push the envelope of what can be done with this versatile tool.

If you liked this video, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel, I am trying to upload one video a month to support the fiber arts and maker community as a whole.

I am a jewelry artist, spinner, and indie dyer in Nova Scotia, Canada, self-taught in all areas. I hope these posts help encourage and inspire you along your creative journey, no matter if you approach your craft my way or not. 🙂 Check out my About Me page for more info and the Fiber Arts/Spinning/Dyeing Category for more content like this.

Tag: hackle

Master the Art of Fiber Blending with This Hackle Trick!