Adding To The Handspun Stash

From this...

..to this...

Merino, 40g, 14 wpi

The fibre was one of my first attempts at hand dyeing. In my head, I had visions of pale pink, soft green and patches of white...I was sure surprised when this came out ;)  My spinning has been sorely neglected of late, but I had started plying this and put it aside until yesterday.

This was my first attempt at fractal spinning, which I started on a challenge day of last years Tour de Fleece. Fractal spinning creates a kind of self striping yarn...I'm keen to knit this up into something to see how it turns out.

Now For Another

Hot on the heels of my first try at dyeing comes my second attempt...which I am very happy with. Maybe because pink, in all it's shades, is my favourite colour, or just because this turned out so differently to what I expected!

I applied pink and black food colouring in sections. The black food colouring has a little blue in it, which can be seen in the fibre, and it has mixed in with the pink to make a gorgeous lavender! Think I may be getting a little addicted to this dyeing lark ;)

Learning To Dye

Since I started spinning last year I have been in awe of the beautifully coloured fibres for sale. I have bought a few, but last weekend while browsing Ewe Give Me The Knits I decided to buy a 1kg merino top, and try my hand at dyeing. The top arrived on Thursday, and there were two things which surprised me when I opened the parcel. Firstly, the incredibly gorgeous creamy colour. For some reason, I thought it would be white, or off white. The second was the smell of lanolin...it brought memories of my childhood back. We had a tube of it which in the medicine cabinet, and any dry or chafed skin was treated with lanolin.

Last night I had my first dyeing attempt...quite pleased with how it turned out. I used food colouring, (Queen brand) Pillar Box Red and Blue. I soak the top in water with citric acid first, then lay it on cling wrap (with a few layers of newspaper underneath). Using plastic cups, I fill each one with water, add food colouring and pour it down the middle of the top. Then, pulling cling wrap over the fibre, I 'smoosh' it slightly to help the colour move out to the edges. After this is done, the fibre is wrapped in the cling wrap, and rolled up to fit in my saucepan/steamer. It's steamed (not boiled) for 45 minutes to set the colour, then allowed to cool completely before it is given a little rinse in fresh water to ensure that the citric acid is removed. 

For now, I'm only using small sections of the top, until I gain confidence with colours and the whole dyeing process. This afternoon I dyed another section using pink and black...it's turned out very nice, and is drying in the bathroom