I Dyed a Little.

I finished spinning the last of my fiber a couple of weeks ago. The result was a nice, but very boring silk yarn, so I picked up some kool-aide, and threw it in a pot with the yarn.

I forgot to take a before picture until it was in the pot. The fiber was natural white, though the grey I tried (and failed) to dye a few years ago with food coloring. The grey was okay, just not really what I wanted.

This, naturally, made me think of this:

Which is one of my favorite movies (we won't talk about the books, especially the third one).

(No marmalade was involved in the making of this yarn.)

After about an hour simmering in blue raspberry lemonade, I wound up with this:

It's hard to tell, but the tweedy looking ball actually has some white in it still, so it's not a solid blue/grey. For that matter, the smaller one also has some white in it, but not as much. I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with it, but I can't wait to knit it up.

Teaser

Well, it’s not the picture I promised.

But it still makes me really, really happy.

I’ve spent the last couple of days dying. I had to remind myself of some of the process, since it’s been about a year or a little more since I last got the dye pot out. I’ve got eight ounces of wool ready to be spun, just waiting on some bamboo to come in and then I’ll be able to spin/dye both it and some silk I’ve got. Then I can start setting up the shop. :) I’m very pleased. (The yarn you see in this picture, by the way, is mine. MINE. Not for sale. The roving, however, will get spun and end up in the shop.)

Stick around. I've still got more to do.

Changing colors

I dyed the alpaca yarn yesterday using two packets of black cherry kool-aide and some instructions I found on Knitty. The alpaca didn't take the dye as well as I had hoped, especially considering the concentration of the dye and the fact that I nuked it three times. Maybe it didn't soak long enough? But in was sitting in the water for several minutes before I added it to the dye bath.

Oh well, it's not bad. I don't think the lack of saturation ruined it, or anything. Either way, I'll have to blend it with something else in order to make anything out of it.