lisa’s place

The dyeing bug has hit me hard.  I had to put all of my supplies away so that I’d stop playing with them.

After the first batch of fibers, I wanted to try for some lighter colors.  I think this is potentially going to be difficult for me – for spinning fibers, I am very drawn to the natural fleece colors and deeply saturated jewel tones.

I used a pretty simple immersion technique (more about this soon) for the first fibers I dyed and was able to create deep and somewhat saturated colors:

I wanted to be able to dye some fiber that would have a little more variation to it when it was spun.  The easiest way to do this (or so it seems to me) is to leave some undyed areas in the fiber.  Instead of using an immersion technique, I painted the fiber and used an oven steam method.  I used wool rovings this time (instead of superwash).

Here are some of the results:

As you can probably see, the purples and blues seem to be my favorites right now…

I added some orange-red to this one, hoping for a sandy brown and I actually had pretty good luck.  This roving is very reminiscent of summer to me, very beach-y.

I also dyed this roving using an immersion technique similar to my first try, but using slightly less dye and I applied it in a somewhat different way (more on this soon, too):

I can’t seem to get a photo of this one that really captures the colors.  It is definitely mostly purples and greens, but there are also many, many shades of gray in this roving.

That’s all for now.
Enjoy your St. Patrick’s Day (have some green beer or something).

Remember this?

Here it is as a finished 2-ply yarn:

Both of these photos are overexposed, but the color is pretty close.  There is a little more contrast within the yarn than there is in these photos.  All these darned cloudy days here and I can’t get good light for anything.  It feels like spring, but it sure doesn’t look like spring!

This is about 340 yards (310 meters) of about a heavy-ish sockweight yarn.

It is pretty bright, but I am really liking how it reminds me of spring and new plant growth – really bright greens with hints of yellows and blues here and there.

I had a little trouble getting my twist right on both the singles and during plying.  As always, I spun lively singles and then added a LOT of twist when plying.  Unfortunately, I think a bit more twist was required during plying.

Ah, well.  Lesson learned.

Because I am… well… me, I had to start dyeing some of that superwash immediately!

It looked so, so lonely sitting there all naked and alone:

I can’t decide what I think of the finished products, but it sure is fun!

I just tried this and that and didn’t worry too much about my technique.  Instead, I just tried to get colors that I would actually use (or at least enjoy petting – did I mention this is some soft roving?)  Additionally, I really wanted to avoid getting too much dye and having color seep out of the roving/yarn forever.  So far, I think I was successful.

I have a pretty limited set of dyes (a cyan, a magenta, and a yellow), and I am pretty new to mixing these particular base colors.   Using citric acid crystals is also new – I love that it hardly has any smell at all this way.

Here they are.

First, the dark blues and deep purples:

The pinks and oranges:

The blues and greens:

and finally, the lighter blues and purples:

In case it isn’t obvious, I’m a bit of a fan of bright and cheery colors.

Because I am the most incredibly impatient person you’ll ever meet, I had to start spinning some of this.

Here is the first bobbin of the green singles:

I think this will be really pretty when it is plied.  I might actually end up with a sockweight 2-ply yarn- yay!

On a completely unrelated note, I am loving how easy it is to post using WordPress – I’m afraid that Blogger made me a little crazy sometimes.  This is just so easy and so quick – it really only takes a few minutes.

Okay, that’s all for now.

Some spinning friends and I went together on an order of fiber from Sheep Shed Studio (so we could save on shipping).  Remember the fiber-y goodness from last time?

I thought the box was stuffed full for that first order… well, that was nothing like this time.

This picture really doesn’t show just how round this box was.  I actually snorted when I saw it.

16 lbs of fiber crammed into a pretty small box!   It just popped right out at me when I cut the tape.

This is my share of the Superwash wool.  I spun a little sample that Carol sent last time and just loved it.  With this roving, I am going to try a little dyeing myself.  I just want pretty deep colors for making socks.  There are so many patterns that I want to make that need a solid or semi-solid yarn (and I very rarely see the colors I have in mind in yarn shops).

In case you can’t see how soft this roving looks, here’s a close-up:

Tracy and Emily both ordered this black-mix wool.  I think it will spin into such a nice yarn (now I am really regretting not ordering any – I think I always feel that way).

We all ordered the white roving.  The selection that Carol sent all looks like this.  A little predrafting (I wouldn’t even go that far, just a slight stretch seems to do the trick) and soft, soft, fluffy whiteness to spin.  It, too, is very soft.  I can’t even explain how excited I am to have 5 lbs of this!  I’ll be busy for a long while.

Just so you can get an idea of how much fiber was in that little box – here it is all sitting behind my couch.  It looks icky because it is in plastic bags (had to divvy it up so I could start playing with my parts).  This is so much wool, I am a little giddy.  I’m sure Tracy and Emily will love this!

(Pay no mind to the grubby looking carpet