This was an odd project – it sort of came from nowhere and all worked out right. I’m sure something suitably disastrous will happen soon to rebalance this in a karma sort of way… Meanwhile I’m really happy with my new bag!
It’s lined with pink corderoy fabric and even has a magnetic fastener to keep the top shut. I’ve managed to fit my purse, camera, diary and a little bag of fibre inside it (just in case I need to try out any spindles today, you understand) and am off to test it out.
So, the fibre I dyed has been spun and plyed and is rapidly turning into a bag. The handle seems to be taking forever – I wanted it to be strong so it is a tube of seed stitch, but I can’t decide when to stop knitting. I’m going to felt the bag so the handle will get shorter, but I bet it will stretch with use…
I knitted a Booga Bag a couple of years ago and remember that it got much shorter but not a lot narrower so I’ve tried to take this into account when making this bag. Hopefully I will finish the handle today and get it in the washing machine – I hate that bit, what if it eats all my hard work and turns it into something the size of a thimble? Then I’m on a button buying mission tomorrow so I can get it finished and use it on Sunday!
When I dyed the last lot of fibre I used up some old dye solution, which had been sat in its squirty bottle for a couple of weeks. I was just curious to see if it made any difference.
It worked fine, but it did look as if the dye had crystalised a little in places, as I got a few green granules appearing here and there – they are just about visible in this picture. They aren’t apparent in the finished fibre, but I guess there’s a limit to how long the dye would stay useable?
I don’t often have a plan, things tend to just sort of happen! Here’s the plan – I want to make a bag, a green grassy sort of coloured bag. It’ll have a shoulder strap and I’m going to felt it. Then I’m going to find some lovely buttons in the shapes of flowers and sew them on.
So I needed some yarn. Which meant I needed fibre. So I had to dye some:
200g of falkland fibre, in various shades of grassy green. Just got to spin it now…
Lots! Lots and lots and lots and lots…
This is the purple shetland fibre that I dyed in my second attempt at dyeing, plied with the various blue/purple/teal/green/angelina fibres that I carded together. This measured up to be around 700 yards of somewhere between lace and fingeringweight yarn. The purple has dulled down the brighter colours somewhat.
I had ideas of making a lightweight cardigan, knitting a thin yarn on big needles and weighing the cuffs and edges down by adding beads. I’m not so sure now, this might become a wide stole, maybe based on a feather and fan stitch. I tried a swatch, just to see how it knit up.
I am much happier with my second attempt at dyeing this weekend. It’s cheerful and bright – my daughter said it was like summer flowers. The fibre was what was left from my original purple sock yarn project – around 150g of superwash merino/nylon mix. I think this will again turn into sock yarn, possibly turning into some socks with a feather and fan pattern.
A brief thank you to the local Brownie pack – again I was able to spend dyeing as they were keeping me child-free for the day! It’s a hundred years of Guiding this year, so I get another day to play in a few weeks time when it’s ‘Party in the Park’ – just in time to top up with fibre for the Tour de Fleece.
I also dyed a silk hankie – I’m not so sure about how that turned out. I might have a go at spinning the silk on my drop spindle rather than my Ladybug. I am eyeing up buying a new drop spindle from IST Crafts (http://thewoodemporium.co.uk/dropspindles.php) who will be at my local Rare Breeds Show next month. I’ll have some time away from home later in the year, so will be wheel-free and it would be good to keep spinning. Have I given myself enough excuses to spend money yet? 🙂
Tagged drop spindle, Dyeing, Fibre, IST Crafts, Rare Breeds Show, Silk, sock yarn
It doesn’t look too bad (does it?), it just doesn’t look like I thought it would. Maybe I just need to put it in a cupboard for a while and get it out later when I have mastered making chocolate ice cream brown and the orange isn’t bugging me?
I dyed some more fibre today – same green and pink dye solution (using it up) and the last of the purple from the previous dyeing session. 150g of superwash merino/tencel and a silk hankie (never spun one of those before – if you have any advice, do leave me a comment). More pictures tomorrow when it’s all dry.
So, I can do pink. I can do green. I still haven’t quite sorted out the paler/darker thing. But brown??? Dye powder + vinegar looked good. Started with neat ‘Rust’ then added a (tiny, I remembered that about that) bit of green and a bit of scarlet. Little bit on a paper towel still looked good:
Looked pretty good on the fibre too.
Then it went orange. Not brown, but orange. I now have 300g of an orangutan hiding amongst pink tulips. It may look better when it dries? Hmmmmmmm…
I need some fibre for the upcoming Tour de Fleece – I’ve joined Team Social and Team Schacht Spinners. I have 300 g of BFL soaking in a bucket. This time round, I am:
Not going to dye my feet purple (put socks on – check!)
Use a tiny tiny tiny bit of dye powder at a time. Really.
Leave some white fibre because I want to go all pale and pastelly this time
Going to try to achieve particular colours – I made this pallette on www.ColourLovers.com. No doubt, the end product will be cometely different, but this is the plan at the moment. No sniggering when I post the end product please. Especially if it turns out purple again…
Tagged Acid Dyes, Ashford Dyes, BFL, colourlovers, Dyeing, Fibre, handdyeing
Childfree time + Sunshine = another go at dyeing!
This attempt looks slightly more like I had in mind first time round, in that the colour is much nearer the purple I was planning. As you can see I have gone wild and purchased a new steamer and a pack of squirty bottles, both of which made the process easier.
I mixed up some hot pink and blue dye powder in an old yogurt pot and added the vinegar. I used a funnel to pour this mix into the bottle, then added water. My plan was to put some dark purple stripes on the fibre, then add more water to dilute the colour and add more and more progressively lighter stripes. Next time I will believe the instructions – the colour of the first stripe and the next diluted stripe were pretty much identical. By the time I got to a pale purple there was so much liquid on the fibre it was swimming in the stuff, so I think it all blurred into one by the time it was cooked!
There are some positives – I like the colour, it hasn’t felted and the dye has gone all the way through the fibre this time. Also, I have some purple freckles on my right foot – covered up everything else despite the baking heat, but forgot I was wearing flip flops!
The fibre I dyed at the weekend was surprisingly lovely to spin.
I have spun one braid (about 80g) and navajo-plied it, which gave me about 200 yards – hopefully plenty for one sock!
I need to spin the rest before starting the socks, as I want to try knitting these two at a time on a circular needle.
I tried out my Ashford Dyes this weekend and this is how the story ended, with around 160g of bluey/pinky/purple fibre.
I learned a lot by trial and error (there’s a blow-by-blow account below in case you are thinking of having a go) and I have added some links to other sites with dyeing info that I found useful.
Top tips:
• A little goes a long, long way
• It doesn’t always do quite what it says on the tin
• No matter how hard they try, dogs are not helpful assistants
• Dyeing outside avoids mess and is therefore a good plan
• Dyeing outside on a windy day will make you curse
• Collapsible steamer insert trays are a bad idea
• If you’re impatient you can dry fibre with a hairdryer
Down to specifics…
I wanted to end up with yarn to make socks – specifically these Leyburn socks www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/leyburn-socks for a SAL/KAL in the LimeGreenJelly group on Ravelry. I’d already spun some lovely BFL/Sparkle fibre but got nowhere near enough yardage. I knew I wanted something purple-ish and wanted fairly rapid colour changes.
I bought 300g of superwash merino/nylon blend from www.worldofwool.co.uk in the hope that I couldn’t destroy superwash! I decided to use around half this amount for my dyeing experiment.
I decided to tie the fibre into two skeins. I was going to work on an old round garden table so didn’t have enough space to lay the fibre out in lengths. Instead, I split the fibre into two lengths and lay them in circles, then tied them with acrylic yarn.
I soaked the fibre in warm water in a bucket for about half an hour, then gently squeezed it out until it was damp rather than sopping wet. Handling the wet fibre was tricky – it suddenly seemed all thin and slippy, like a fluffy cat caught in the rain!
I had all my equipment at the ready (I bet Morrisons never considered using cling-wrap for dyeing when they put ‘multi-purpose’ on the box…) With hindsight, some sort of squirty bottle would be better than a cheap wobbly jug, or maybe a syringe without a needle might be useful for applying the dye solution.
I rolled out two strips of cling-film, then plonked the damp fibre on them. At this point it was a bit like slapstick comedy as the wind was making the cling-film flap all over the place and as fast as I unstuck one piece so another would tangle. Around this time I also decided the dog was far too interested and put her inside the house, much to her displeasure – but explaining a pink and purple dog would be hard to do!
I had decided to use these three Ashford dyes (the pots are tiny, about the size of a pot of nail varnish). I had envisaged an all-over navy/purple yarn with small highlights of teal. Each pot is 10g which it says is enough to dye a kilo of fibre to full intensity (or one flat teaspoon plus 2 tablespoons of vinegar will dye 200g). Despite my cynicism, I can now tell you that this is definitely true – the colours were amazingly vibrant.
I used three plastic jugs and added half a small plastic teaspoon’s worth of dye powder to each one and then two tablespoons of white vinegar. Here’s the dye liquid at this point – a jug of purple, then navy blue, then teal.
The dye pot definitely said purple on it, but the result looked very pink to me… I added warm water to each jug – I dithered for a long time about how much to add and in the end made it up to the half-pint mark on each one.
Then I started adding the dye to the fibre. Easier said than done! I realised that pouring it would end up with great big patches of colour, so I used a very professional technique – I spooned it on with an old scoop from a Horlicks tin! I added narrow stripes across both bits of fibres wherever I fancied. I was taken aback by the strength of the colours and the non-purpleyness of the purple, so then started mixing the jugs of dyes together – adding blue to the ‘purple’ improved the colour a great deal. I now appreciate why indie dyers say ‘unrepeatable colourway’! Maybe another time I would try mixing the colours once I had mixed the dye and vinegar. Having spooned more dye onto the fibre, I diluted the dye mixes further with more water and filled in the gaps that remained on the fibre.
There were some bits where the dye hadn’t soaked right the way through, but at the time I thought the whole thing was going to look very gloomy and sombre coloured, so figured that a little white here and there might soften up the colours when it was spun.
I then folded in the long edges of the cling-film and rolled up each fibre sausage. I wrapped each parcel inside more cling-film and cleared up the equipment. I had dye left over and was not sure how to dispose of it, so at the moment it is in an old plastic milk bottle – maybe it will keep and can be used to dye more fibre?
I then steamed the fibre to set the colour. I had bought a collapsible steamer tray that fits within a saucepan, but next time I will invest in a proper stacking steamer – if you’re not careful the ’petals’ of the collapsible steamer rip the cling-film and the dye starts to escape. The fibre sausages swell up as they cook and luckily I didn’t poke a hole in the cling-film until after about 40 minutes of steaming – I decided that must be a sign that it was ready!
I let the fibre cool for about an hour, then ripped off the cling film and rinsed the fibre in a bucket of warm water – the water remained completely clear. I wrapped the fibre in a towel and squished out as much water as possible, then hung it out to dry. (Eventually I got bored and dried it with a hairdryer, I’m sure this is not on the list of things you should do, but I wanted to see what the finished fibre was like)!
Finally, I played with braiding it – one piece I crocheted into a chain, and the other I made into a plait.
Now all that’s left is to spin it and knit those socks!
Tagged Acid Dyes, Ashford Dyes, Dyeing, Fibre, Hand painted roving, How to dye roving, Ravelry, Roving, UK
Nice chap brought me two parcels today – goodies from www.handspinner.co.uk and www.wheeldalewoolcrafts.co.uk. Hopefully I will have time next weekend to make a start on dyeing some fibre.
Spinstar Creations 