Spinner's Alphabet: What begins with R? Rolag!

By Amelia © October 5, 2026

Rolags forming a transition from
one color to another

R

is for Rolag, that lovely woolen prep from handcarding. You can turn a drum-carded batt into rolags too. You can even make a rolag from commercial top (check out YouTube for tutorials on that). The other woolen prep that we find commercially is Roving. Top and Roving are often mislabeled online, so be careful; Top is often more compressed and is always very regular in appearance with fibers all going one direction and all the same length, while Roving is usually more open (unless it's matted!) and has fibers going many directions and of different lengths.

In addition to making rolags one at a time on handcards, you can make several at a time on a blending board or a drum carder. The picture here shows a blending board with the first rolag removed and the second one removed but still on the dowels. Blending boards are a great way to make several matching rolags in one pass.

My favorite rolag variant is the folag. Normally a rolag is handcarded and then rolled so that all of the fibers wrap around in the direction of the rolling. It's a woolen prep, meant to maximize the amount of air that will be trapped in the spun yarn. The folag, instead, is rolled so that all the fibers are perpendicular to the direction of rolling, which keeps them all straight and aligned. This would be considered a semi-worsted prep, since it is not handcombed and could contain fibers of different lengths. It results in a denser, smoother yarn than spinning from a rolag.

And then there is the puni, which is like a rolag but very tightly rolled. To make them tight, the initial formation is done around a dowel, and then it is wiped in a circular motion to tighten the fiber. Although commonly a cotton preparation, other short fibers such as yak and camel down can also benefit from this prep.

Other fun R's: rough finishing, rescue join

Have you handcarded any rolags, folags, or punis, or spun yarn from them? What's your favorite prep?

Do you have a spinner's R? do tell!

See the whole spinner's alphabet series.

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© October 5, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/