NEW SKEINS AND A DISASTER

Been finding ways to use my spare time... ... ... new skeins of candy floss finished!

Slight disaster with plying with my new coned wool (didn't work, not sure why) so gave it a miss this time and plyed the spun wool with itself!

Only two bobbins so I make do with a pen for storing the yarn during plying.

Result! Two lovely skeins of a light turquoise colour.

Au Revior!

Emma

LONG AWAITED MITTENS

Hello!
Unfortunately I couldn't think of any punny posts for this blog entry!  Unlike Anna, whose summer has been taken up with cough*dissertation*ahem, a plethora of craft based activities, my summer has been taken up with cycling, hiking, camping and job hunting (and not much knitting or spinning....more to come soon though!).
However, here is something small I am still finishing off, a pair of simple mittens with some handspun wool purchased from Kim at http://artequalshappy.typepad.com/, a while ago now!  Some spinning to come...

Emma!

WHAT'S THE MADDER?

Firstly, can I just start by saying that there are so many puns that you can make about madder. It’s madderness!

So summer is rolling along at an alarming pace. Can you believe it’s August already? I mean, where has the time gone? Well, a relatively large portion of my time over the last few weeks has been taken up with a combination of knitting, spinning and dyeing (because nothing says suitable activity during an English heatwave like the production of knitwear, am I right?). There are quite a few different things that I’ve been working on/experimenting with, some of which are complete, some I’m still working on and probably all are deserving of their own blog post so over the next little while I will try to make that happen but for now let’s talk about madder!

For my first jaunt into the realm of natural dyeing I decided to try my luck with madder powder. My first observation about the natural dye process was that it’s nothing if not long winded! I thought knitting was a big enough test of patience but I think with all the soaking, mordanting, cooling time etc. this might just take the cake. I’m learning that it’s just one of those things I’m going to have to embrace about the process. After all, in such a busy world in can be nice to relax into a slower pace for a change and it allows time to multi-task and catch up on reading while you're waiting.

The packet I had only contained 25g of powder and I used about 100g of white fleece so the result was definitely more orange than red but still pretty vibrant. I also experimented by dyeing some ‘Humbug’ Blue Faced Leister in the left over dye bath, which I stupidly didn’t take a picture of. It stayed predominantly brown but with an orangey tint. 

 

I didn’t leave it long before I started spinning it up. I decided it was time to get a bit more experimental with spinning different colours together. I used a mixture of both of the fleeces that I’d dyed with madder and added dashes of some natural dark brown fleece I had lying around, as well as the bright blue we’d dyed before (see previous post). The blue and the peachiness of the madder just looked really good together and made it a bit fun.

Finally, I plied it with a camel coloured machine yarn and voila! 

I’m pretty chuffed with this yarn to tell you the truth. I have a little over 200g of it and it’s going to become a cowl for myself. Happy days!

Emma, I hope you had a fantastic cycling trip!

Over and out!

Anna x

p.s – stay tuned to see what happened when I tried dyeing with avocado stones and blackberries!