Choices

I've pretty much made up my mind that I WILL be buying a drum carder within the next three weeks. I sold the Ashford Traditional and got it shipped yesterday (finally), and my reward for doing that was the promise of a drum carder. After a lot of research, I've narrowed it down to a few possibilities.

The low end of the price scale is the Strauch Petite. This one looks like it has everything I could need *at this point in time*, and it has a fairly small footprint to boot. I hear it's heavy enough that you don't actually need to clamp it to anything, and I think it would be a good choice. But what if I outgrow it too quickly?

Deb's Delicate Deluxe looks fabulous, but I think I'd have a hard time figuring out which drum(s) to order. I have a (rather alarming) variety of fleeces in my stash, from Black Welsh Mountain to Romney to Shetland to Australian Merino and lots in between. There's even some mohair and an entire prizewinning alpaca rose-grey. BFL and Finn may find their way into my stash soon too. I sort of want a carder that will do everything in one go, you know?

Louet's Roving Carder Jr looks really cool, but I hear that if you want to do any blending, it may not be the very best choice. I've pretty much ruled out this one due to that factor - I want options to do pretty much everything if I feel like I need to learn it, and lack of easy blending capability is a big drawback.

At the top end of the spectrum is the Pat Greene Beverly, because it's like the Delicate Deluxe on steroids.

And I dream of either a Fancicard or a Triple Drum Supercard, but those are pretty much "if I win the lottery" types of carders in my little corner of the universe.

Anyone out there who might actually be reading this - do you have a carder? Do you like it? What are it's best features? Worst? If you were to get a new one, what would you get?

I need to make a decision here w/in a couple of weeks. Oh dear.