Momentum

It is probably too late at night to be writing a blog...but I am anyways. I have been so excited about selling yarn that I have been telling everyone I meet and handing out cards. The problem being I haven't got my detail pictures of the yarn to post on Etsy. So no goods on Etsy. Oops. This week looks like a small tornado going through my life, but I have made it through day 1. I am waiting for the technical yarn guru who lives deep within to come to the surface and give me some words to say about all my yarn. For now I am satisfied with words like soft, squishy, smooth, fantastical, fluffy...words that might describe a small dog or one of my skeins of yarn. Enjoy a picture of Lupine Valley (above) and Blue Fire (below). Both are hand-dyed, but only Blue Fire by myself.

Hand-dyed & spun by Yours Truly. I really love this yarn. I might not sell it. I might keep it for myself and my own selfish knitting. But I think I will still put it out at the craft fair. It is superwash fiber that I hand-painted and wrote about in the post "Dyeing to Tell". The fiber started as a bright saffron. The original dye job spun up very dark as a single, so I dyed more with lots more space between the colors. Used the same colors and got a much brighter single and plyed together they created this lovely skein. I have around 250 g of this colorway. Enough for an actual project!

Now, the 2 skeins below are the sky blue fiber I dyed. The picture on top is the roving with red that I added and didn't know if I would like. The bottom picture is the roving with blues, purples & black in it. I plyed both with the original plain blue roving. This is where spinning gets interesting. I wanted to see how they both looked plyed with the same fiber. I like the muted one. But the one with the red is not quite on my palate. I like neither as much as the top picture. My mom, who is not an orange fan, loved the blues. So, I trust that there are more people like her out there in the world and that they will like the blue yarn.

Spinning Up the New Stuff

Believe it or not, I spun up these singles right after I dyed them and it took me this long to get them into a post! I really like how the singles spun, but I definetly need to work on my color spacing when I dye. I stripped down the rovings really thin. Not quite pencil roving. The ones I didn't go as thin on turned out the most bland as I spun. The colors are too close together to get strong color blocks. I really liked the green popping out, so after I realized how important the thickness of the roving was, I really stripped it thin. I was going to ply the two similar rovings together, but after a foot or so of that realized how bland a yarn it would be. So, now I have a new dye job to do. I want to dye a light roving and a dark roving to compliment the med. tone ones I have now. The light will be mostly saffron with lt.orange, a little red & the same green just not as strong depth of shade. The dark roving will be mostly red, green and a little saffron & lt. orange. So, some colors just different placements. I am excited and hope to get that dying done this week.

Dyeing to Tell

Here is the saga of my latest dyeing adventure. I painted rovings! Starting with superwash rovings is supposed to insure that I don't felt the roving before I get a chance to spin it. To the right I am prepping the fibers, spreading them out so there are no thick spots to inhibit even dye uptake. The rovings are all wet from a long soak in warm water with synthropol. I am using Jacquard acid dyes. The saffron (pictured) & sky blue rovings are mill ends from The Shed.

Starting with a colored fiber means I am over-dying and the original color will tint every color I paint onto the fiber. With that in mind, I chose Fire Red, a dark orange mix, a light orange mix and pure Sky blue for the saffron rovings. I was hoping that the red would be strong enough to completely overpower the yellow fiber, and it did. And the Sky Blue would tint into a bright green which it also did. The colors interacted with the saffron pretty close to what I expected. What I did not expect was how much the dyes would wick down the fiber. My stripes of color almost all turned out too close together and I lost much of my fabulous green to the red leaking over it and turning it purple. Not really what I wanted. You can see from the upclose picture of the roving that the stripes were relatively separate when I applied them. However, as they soaked in and then got steamed, they spread out quite a bit. To the left is the 4, 1oz strips of saffron just after painting. To the right is the close up of the stripes. Can you believe that most of those narrow, dark stripes that look green are actually pure blue and got covered up by the red stripes to either side? Cool.


After painting the rovings on both sides I rolled them up into saran wrap coils. They had been prepped on top of saran wrap, so this step was relatively easy. Then I steamed them in a big pot for at least 20 min. Let them cool overnight and then rinsed them out. I was really impressed with how little dye bled out. That steaming really sets the color! Next I laid them out to dry. After a day or so trying to keep the kids from knocking the trays with the fiber over onto the floor they were ready to braid up for storage.

I love the picture below of the colorful rovings drying.
I wish the sun had been shining on them, but that will have to wait for another day.



Finally, we have the finished products. A colorful mass of fiber that, I hope, will spin into bright, confetti yarns. I will try a different colorway on the sky blue next time. The red covered over more than I expected. I think it would have been better with just the dark blue, black & purple. The entire process took much longer than anticipated. I thought I was embarking on an hour or so playtime at 9pm and instead finished wearily at 12:30am, leaving the coils cooling in the steam pot. I definitely learned a ton. So, anytime you want to paint some rovings, come on over and let's have at it! Just plan for twice as long as you think it might take.