By Erin Berryman
I took a Clemes and Clemes blending board class on June 5, 2025 in Estes Park, Colorado, at the Estes Wool Market. My mom joined me, as she has for each class I’ve taken at the Wool Market the past few years (you can see her a few paragraphs below). I was really looking forward to adding a new skill to my fiber prep repertoire; I learned to spin 4 years ago, and I’ve primarily worked with already-prepped combed sliver or roving.
Having taken the Clemes drum carder class a couple years earlier, I was aware of the value in having a way to blend colors and different fibers on a carding cloth. Two years later, and my expensive drum carder had yet to manifest, so I thought a blending board sounded much more achievable while providing similar functionality. Thanks to the member contributions to the NCWG scholarship fund, I was able to learn the basics of using a blending board to prep fiber for spinning at a full-day workshop by Roy Clemes at the Wool Market.
If you aren’t familiar with Clemes and Clemes, they are a father-son shop that focuses on hand-building high-quality wool and fiber preparation tools in California. There’s a lot to like about the company - they are true craftsmen, striving for perfection (even if it means a higher cost), yet they aren’t too precious to restrict any workshop participant from going nuts on thousands of dollars worth of equipment. Plus, they are just nice, likeable people who are generous in sharing their knowledge of fiber craft. Roy interspersed personal stories of the family and business in between the blending board demos, and there was lots of conversation and laughing throughout the day.
Beyond the excitement of getting to work with the products themselves, the workshop was structured to allow plenty of time for exploring the tool and the basic techniques. The process is simple:
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The blending board is laid flat on the table in front of you.
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0.5 ounces of fiber is laid down gradually on the board in 5 to 8 layers, gently compacting and blending the fiber with a firm brush
- The fiber is then rolled carefully off the board in thirds, wrapping it around dowels, to create rolags (the sausage-like things shown below).
The Clemes guys have made some modifications to their board to allow for ease of fiber placement, blending and rolag-rolling, but steps 1-3 can be applied to any board with carding cloth. In fact, after the workshop I borrowed a homemade blending board from another guild member and enjoyed it enough to purchase it from her (a savings over the Clemes setup by about $200).
The class was broken up into 6 sessions of creating 2 rolags each: the first was to try out the new skill, and the second one was to get it (mostly) right. Roy had a table at the front and for each session, he demonstrated how to lay down the fiber and blend to get the desired result. Of course, it looked very simple at first, until I tried my own hand at it and created some quirky looking rolags. Over the course of the day, each attendee blended a total of 6 ounces of wool, resulting in 12 rolags. Multiply that by about half a dozen people in the class, and that’s a lot of rolags. By the end of the day, I felt pretty comfortable with my ability to blend colors and create a ready-to-spin rolag.
One of the more surprising things I learned was how the process transformed the appearance of the fiber colors, such as when a clashing circus-clown bag of dyed top was blended into a muted bluish-grey yellow reminiscent of a foggy fall morning. It spun up into a lovely semi-woolen yarn.
I also learned that blending boards aren’t just for dyed wool. We also used the board to prep some natural-colored California Variegated Mutant locks, which are the natural grey rolags shown here.
I’m so glad I took this workshop. I learned a new skill which opened my eyes to some wider possibilities with fiber. I found that I really enjoy spinning from a well-prepped rolag, although I’m still developing my technique for woolen-spun yarn. Thank you, Northern Colorado Weavers Guild, and the Stash4Scholarships for this enlightening and fun experience.
