Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Dyeing and Spinning

Lots of pictures today. I have been spinning up a storm these days, which probably explains why I haven't been knitting much (well not knitting much since I finished all that knitting I was doing).

It started off with some merino that I spun up for a hand spun swap on Ravelry. Though I loved the colours I hadn't spun merino for a long time and the result was more uneven than I liked. I'm sure it will knit up beautifully but I didn't think it made a very nice swap skein. I think I may try knitting the baby surprise jacket with it. It is about 250 yards of a dk/sport weight yarn.

Since I still needed a skein to swap I played around with dying some white merino I had on hand. It came out a really lovely mix of purples (I think of it as an Amethyst colour). It also spun up much more evenly. It has been sent to and received at its new home.

Between the two merino swap skeins I started spinning the Crown Mountain Farms Corriedale Pencil roving. It spun up really quickly and I now have 680 yards of worsted weight yarn. The plan is to knit this into some sort of baby blanket with a softer merino edging.

With that in mind I dyed up the rest of my white merino. I was aiming at a sort of raspberry colour and got a darker garnet colour that I am really happy with. I purposely dumped in more vinegar than needed so that the colour would break and give me something more mottled. I really can't wait to start spinning this.

Once the merino was as full of dye as it was going to get I still had rather a lot of dye in the water. I dug out my dark BFL and dumped it in to soak up the last of the dye. I'm also thrilled with the colour it came out and it too may become part of the baby blanket.


All of this hand spun baby stuff is for a couple of grad school friends of ours who are expecting their first in early March. Winter babies need wool as far as I am concerned. It is also a lot of fun to make baby stuff. So stay tuned for cute knitting.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Wow, Jenny you have been very busy! It all looks lovely.