It's a good day to dye...

Oooh it has been a while since I put anything up here on my blog!  So sorry about that!

With the biting cold of this Wisconsin winter, I've been doing some dye work this month.  It is such fun to work with dye on colored wools, so I shot some pictures of the latest batch of experiments.

I soaked 100 grams of wool from various fleeces in my stash and put them in the dye pot to try out the effect of overdyeing the darker natural colored wools.



The mini trampoline drying rack - because I'm fancy like that.

Here's the whole bunch on my drying rack... a mini trampoline that has lost a few too many springs and attachments due to age, but it makes a dandy drying rack when I put it up on sawhorses!

Clockwise from the top:
1. Corriedale, natural gray "Sierra" in Amethyst.
2. Cormo, white "Poppy" in Amethyst and then as a cleanup for Peacock Blue.
3. Corriedale, natural gray "Sierra" in Peacock Blue.
4. English Leicester Longwool steel gray "Theo" clean up batch in Peacock Blue.
5. English Leicester Longwool steel gray "Theo" in Peacock Blue.

Wool is a protein fiber, so I use acid dyes to color the wool fibers.  Typically, vinegar is used for the acidification of the dye bath, but since I plan to sell these colors, I used citric acid instead since it has no odor and uses a much smaller quantity.  I learned this when I started dying with the Nasty Romney fleece that started this journey.

Speaking of the Nasty Romney, I have had good news that I can finally share!  I had submitted a proposal of the story of that fleece to Spin-Off Magazine quite a while ago, and I was selected for the Spring 2014 issue featuring color.  I'm on page 70 of the magazine, with my article titled "Making Lemonade".  Here is a link to the magazine: Spin-Off Spring 2014


I'll be putting some batts from both this dye batch and the Nasty Romney (now somewhat affectionately named Anastasia for obvious reasons) into my Etsy shop for your perusal and purchase.

Currently also hard at work on another delightful series of batts called the "Magic" series.  All of these batts are full of sparkle and an interesting blend of fibers.

Here's a taste of the series for your pleasure.
 


Wings of Pegasus

Here is the link to the listing in the shop for this batt called Wings of Pegasus.

Tour de Fleece recap...

It seems that I go through phases in my fiber art life. Right now I'm in a spinning phase and having a wonderful time!  Just finished Tour de Fleece, which I have never done before.  I had not heard of it until recently, but it is a self-directed spinning challenge that runs at the same time as the Tour de France bicycle race.  Having no interest in sports, I did the challenge for the personal satisfaction.

I participated in three teams, the first one was Knit Picks and I chose to spin a three ply yarn to complete the singles I had spun of "Blue Fleck" colorway from AlohaBlu that I received in a spinning swap a while back. 

Spin swap from AlohaBlu, the Blue Fleck custom dyed roving is in the middle

When I get those precious braids of handpainted roving I like to plan a yarn around them to show their beauty. This particular roving was about two ounces, and I like to have more yarn than that in the event I want more than an accent of the handpaint.  So I made up more batts to match. In this case, I wanted a subtle blend of blues and teals so I combined these fibers into batts: some gray Corriedale from a sheep named "Sierra", some wool top in a colorway "Bluebell" and some hand dyed Firestar in blue and teal.  All of this came from my stash (how cool is that!) so it made me feel extra good about the yarn I was making!  Here's the picture of the finished "Blue Fleck" singles and the stash of the other fibers.

Blue Fleck singles, Bluebell top, Firestar in blue and teal

Sierra Corridale

The finished batts looked like this:

I made four of these at 33 grams each so that I would have two bobbins with well over two ounces each for plying.  I prefer not to have to try and match batts after the fact, because it seems to be like dye lots, where even if I use the same materials and in the same ratios it never looks identical.

Then I started the spinning.  It seemed to take forever since I wanted the final yarn to be pretty fine.  I finished a bit early, which was a relief and did the plying and got this yarn:

It ended up being 600 yards, 160 grams or 5.6 ounces!  No wonder it felt like I had been spinning forever!  I ended up with quite a bit of the blended singles left, so I did an experiment with embellished yarn using sequins strung on sewing thread.  I chain plied it with the two strands held together, very fiddly and time consuming, but I really like the resulting yarn:

It is 36 grams or 1.3 ounces and 92 yards.  At this point, I'm planning to use this yarn set for some kind of outerwear with the sequined yarn for trim.  It isn't soft enough for next to the skin, but it is gorgeous and will wear well.  Haven't decided on knitting or weaving yet, or even what form of garment.  So into the stash it goes for the time being.

Nasty Romney goes pink!

Well, a very long time ago I produced this hot pink wool from the nastiest fleece I ever worked with.

One of four dye baths I did with this Romney fleece.  Blogged it at the very start of the blog, so I won't re-tell the story here.  Suffice it to say - I finally did something with some of this pink wool.  Did a nice blend with some gray Corriedale from a ewe named Sierra and added a bit of white icicle fiber for some sparkle. 

It seemed to take forever to get this done, I had 99 grams of batts to spin.  Mostly did it while I was sitting at the computer listening to podcasts and my Celtic music station on Pandora radio.  Nice way to pass the time, to be sure! 

Spun the singles on a spindle and chain plied them on my wheel.

I ended up with this:

A lovely mauve yarn, with a touch of sparkle.  Softer than the Romney alone and more interesting than either color wool would have been.  I'm pretty partial to heathered colors anyway, I like the character and interest that they have when worked up into something.  I originally thought I'd do a scarf out of this, there is a pretty one from Spin-Off by Stephanie Gaustad called Helix Scarf.  It is a ruffled confection that is a very interesting knitting pattern.  Besides that, it would be great with my winter coat.

Spinning in progress...

Busy, busy, busy and always more to do.  But this is what I've been working on.  I showed you the Cormo I was spinning in my last post.  I've spun up about half of what I have on hand and have this pretty little skein to show for it.

The next thing I've been working on is a pretty good sized quantity of batts that I had made of some of the pink Romney from way back when.  I blended it with some great light gray Corriedale from a ewe named Sierra from my favorite shepherd in Colorado.  I also decided to blend in a little bit of white icicle to add some sparkle to the yarn.  My original plan was to knit up a ruffled scarf that I found in Spin Off some time ago.  An odd thing happened as I worked with this blend.  The Corriedale was a little "sticky" to work with. I had washed it quite a while before I actually did anything with it, so it "rested" in that state. Since the blending was already finished, I went ahead and spun it up the way it was.  But I also decided to re-wash some of the fleece that hadn't been used in the blended batts.  Much, much better... feels clean and pleasant again.  I had no idea such a thing could happen with fleece as it sits waiting its turn in my stash.  I'll definitely chalk this up as a learning experience!  I doubt that I could spin a fleece "in the grease" since I found a little stickyness so icky to work with.

Here's a shot of the singles on the spindle and the bobbin that I load the singles onto as they accumulate.  This way I don't end up with a bunch of tiny skeins.

I still have a little more to finish up but I am on the last batt now.  The sparkle of the icicle doesn't really show up on the pictures - most sparkle fibers seem to be pretty camera shy.  I wonder sometimes how people get shots of Angelina that show the multicolor glittery effect.

I made another neat discovery.  There is a virtual knitting/spinning guild of sorts over on the Knit Picks website.  I've just joined up... it should be interesting to see what I find over there.

Until next time....