A Good Day to Dye...

Today I bring you eye candy. A few weekends ago a few of my friends had a dye party, and I had a wonderful time. The event was made great by the hospitality of Benita, the dye preparation of Brenda, and the company and fine cooking of Benita, Brenda, Kelley (knittergirl), Mary, Janet, Bob, Janet, Judi and BadKitten. My skeins are above, drying. The large one in the middle is Shetland 2-ply (fingering.) All the others are angora-merino 2/28 lace weight.
Above are the same skeins, just dry and two also re-skeined. Two of them were very long skeins that I wound on a warping board to get long color repeats. I re-skeined them to make them more easy to deal with when I am ready to use them.
This is a picture of one of Knittergirl's skeins. I think that is hand-spun courtesy of Brenda...
Here you have some Romney roving dyed by BadKitten. I wish I had pictures of the amazing colors everyone else got, but alas I do not. We are getting together to do this again in June, so I will bring my camera! I'll be back next week with more fiber fun! Until then, knit on!

And the beat goes on...

I dyed some of that lovely fleece, using natural stuff...that would be cochineal, turmeric, walnuts and goldenrod.
I dyed some of my hand spun yarn too...
Here you can see the fleece drying...
And the yarn drying, left to right...goldenrod, tint of turmeric and cochineal (3 skeins), tint of walnut, cochineal, turmeric with a hint of cochineal. I just LOVE color.
Darling nephew, playing the accordion and doing a color dance.



And there is more to come...I hope some of you are weavers, because I will share the entire project once I am done. Until then, knit on (or weave on.)

Madness and mayhem...what is she doing?

1000 yards of hand spun yarn from this roving, fingering weight, washed and soaked in alum and cream of tartar. I spun this on my wheel last week. I usually use a drop spindle, but not for this much yardage... Big pot of simmering water and Dawn dish soap...
Little baskets of this fleece (belonging to a sheep named Pretty Girl) from Pitchfork Ranch, soaking in hot, Dawny water...

What in the world am I up to?? More later!