Dyed Locks

I'm prepping some raw Merino cross fleece for spinning. These locks are not as soft and smooshy as pure Merino, but they have considerable lustre! I'm working out a new colour work pattern for mittens and need several colors.

Into the dye pots (well mason jars, actually) to get two shades of pink, some green, orangey yellow and orange.



These are the same dark pink locks from the first photo, I've separated them and will flick the tips open before I spin them.



The green is actually from a Merino fleece - it's just a small sample. The bulk of the yarn for this particular project will be green and I love how this Merino fleece feels! I wasn't sure how best to obtain the precise green I wanted - hence the sampling.



Here's a few one yard 3ply samples that I spun from various blends of dyed fleece and undyed fleece. My fav is the one second from the left.

I'll also need light brown (sampled above), black and white. The black will be from some Shetland fleece I've recently washed and the white from some Merino lamb leftover from this dyeing project with B.

Incidently, all this fun is for Episode 3 of Project Spinway...

Watching Fluff Dry

B's fluff has been dry for a few days, but I only just found time to photograph it. We're both very happy with how it looks. But now we have to decide how to prep it for spinning.



My plan is to blend it like I did for my Peacock yarn, but the fluff I used for that was already either drumcarded into a mini batt, or pulled into top. We've got fluffy clouds of farm fresh merino lamb and I'm not sure what to do to make it mix together. I tried using my hand cards on a bit of it and don't think it's going to work to blend it like I did with the Peacock Spindies fluff.

Maybe I'll have to find someone with a drumcarder to help me.

Purple Fluff

B wanted to dye roving or carded fiber instead of yarn. Which is a good thing, since that's all I had in colors that would take dye well!

For her first attempt, she wanted to dye 8 different blues and purples to blend with a teensy bit of natural black and white.

Yesterday, while getting my Purples in order, I also washed up 4oz of Merino Lamb Fleece from Natchwoolie's Sushi club. This club is so much fun. There is something about knitting with yarn that started out as raw sheepy smelling fiber that gives me a thrill!

So today, the Merino Lamb was ready for her to dye. She used my kitchen scale to weigh 10g balls of fleece and placed them into 1L jars with water and vinegar. Then we calculated how much of red and blue each jar would need to obtain the colors she wanted.

We placed the jars in a 200 degree oven for about an hour, then placed them on the kitchen counter to cool. The water was completely clear, and the fleece took up the color beautifully.

Once the fleece is dry, I'm supposed to prep it like I did for the Peacock Spindies Yarn and spin it for her. I'm thinking a thick single, to preserve the softness of the merino. I might make it into mittens for her, but she's still somewhat wool resistant, so the final judgement will be in if she finds them itchy once knitted up.

Purple Dye Experiment

I'm supposed to be dyeing with B tomorrow. Knowing that she's going to want to try colors other than the Red, Blue and Yellow I've got, I decided to mix up my dye stocks today and experiment with what percentages will give nice purples.

I'm using Greener Shades dyes. I've got a little sample pack that comes with Sunshine Yellow, Ruby Red and River Blue. On the Ravelry Greener Shades forum, there are some excellent examples of Reds and Greens, so I didn't have to reinvent the wheel there. And orange is just not my thing, so if B wants orange, we'll wing it! But purple...

Knowing that I didn't want to dip into my dyes too much for these tests, I figured that the smallest amount of 1% DOS dye stock that I could measure would be 1mL. This weighs 1 gram; so I'd need 1 gram of yarn. I have some white KnitPicks palette and calculated from the ball band that about 4.5 yards would be about a gram.

snip snip snip


Here's my little yarn samples resting in some disposable cups with a vinegar water solution.

Next I mixed up my sample Purples. I wanted to try a range of blue to red ratios in a 1% and a 0.2% DOS.

Even though I only needed 1mL for each little yarn sample, I had to mix up 5mL of each test purple. Again this is because I couldn't measure anything smaller than 1mL with any accuracy.

So I went with the following

80% River Blue, 20% Ruby Red - 4mL blue, 1mL Red
60% River Blue, 40% Ruby Red - 3mL blue, 2mL Red
40% River Blue, 60% Ruby Red - 2mL blue, 3mL Red
20% River Blue, 80% Ruby Red - 1mL blue, 4mL Red

These were my 1% DOS Purples. To make the 0.2% DOS Purples, I mixed 1mL of each of these with 4mL of water.

For each of my 8 Purples, I put 1mL into each of the little disposable cups with the yarn.


I nuked the little samples for a total of 3 cycles of 1 minute cooking & 5 minutes resting. The yarn took up the dye beautifully and left the water almost completely clear.

And here are my little Purple babies!



The colors on my monitor are very close to the actual yarn, I hope they are for yours too.

I'm dyeing...

I enjoyed spinning this roving. But I learned something about my preferences for spinning and knitting while working with it. I learned that I prefer the knitted fabric, when there is less contrast between the different colors of the yarn. White and Bright Orange produced a fabric that was not my favorite.

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So... when I placed an order with KnitPicks for a whack of yarn, I also bought a single jar of Jaquard Acid Dye in Pink.

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Couldn't have been easier. Soak CAmpino yarn. Bring a pot of water to a simmer, add vinegar and dye powder. Stir, add yarn, stir. Let sit. Rinse.

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And I'm pleased with the results!

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