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Dyeing in a Thrifted Electric Roaster

Last Friday on our weekly thrifting trip, I found this big electric roaster marked $8 at a garage sale. I found 2 books at this sale too and offered $5 for all three, so I'm calling this a $4 roaster. As you can see, I brought it home, pulled out the dye stock solutions that I haven't used in years and found a hunk of fiber.

As I mentioned, the dye solutions were quite old and I didn't expect them to work very well, hence the pale fiber. In addition, a bit of dye came off on my hands when I spun it. Despite that issue, the roaster worked like a charm and I love dyeing outside because there are no fumes to contend with.

Photos of the spun up yarn soon.

How to dye wool with Easter Egg Dye

We finished up dyeing our eggs and I looked at all the cups filled with that gorgeous dye and couldn't resist!  So I ran upstairs and grabbed some wool.  It's very easy to dye wool using leftover Easter egg dye -- let me tell you what I did.

First of all, we used the Paas tablets -- the kind that require vinegar to activate.  And we dye eggs using glass cups which worked very nicely since they can be microwaved -- but I'm getting ahead of myself.

After we finished up our eggs, I took some wool and tore it into sections that I thought would be able to fit in each cup and kind of rolled it into a little ball or nest shape.  Then I filled a clean bowl with warm water and soaked each piece of wool -- just for a few minutes so that it was saturated.  Then after squeezing out the excess water I plunked the pieces of wool into the cups filled with the extra dye.

After that I microwaved each cup (one at a time) -- our microwave is old an feeble, so I think I did about 2 minutes per cup.  I did a second round of microwaving -- this time it was only 1-1:30 minutes per cup, then I let them sit for a while.  The dye exhausted in some, but simply wouldn't in others.

After a nice rest of about an hour, I took out each hunk of wool and rinsed it until it ran clear -- the green was a b*tch!  I rinsed it and rinsed it and soaked it in clear water and rinsed it some more.  ugh!  After that I squeezed out the extra water and hung them to dry.  After they were dry I pre-drafted a bit to fluff them up and. . .

Here they are!  The purple dye reacted strangely with the wool -- the pink from the dye flew unto the wool leaving blue dye behind.  I was glad I used the nest/ball method or one half would have been pink and the other blue.  As it turned out the whole thing is verigated!  Nice surprise!

So, no fancy equipment -- no fancy tools.  Next time you dye eggs, give it a try!

Indigo Results

Check another item off the list!  I rinsed out the indigo dyed yarn and roving, re-hanked the yarn and pre-drafted the roving.  There was mininal color loss, I'm happy to report.

The yarn and roving both seem to have taken on a somewhat coarser texture.  The roving was only dipped twice, so it remains the softest.  I'll have to report on it's characteristics post-spinning. 

Speaking of natural dyes. . . Remember the CVM fiasco?  Could it be the natural dyes?  Or the chemicals needed to get the natural dyes to stay put?  This could be a possible drawback of this type off dye.

So, I also dyed up the hank of laceweight and I'm planning on podcasting all about it!  I have been delayed by the construction two doors down.  They have been jack-hammering all week and now they are doing some other noisy things.  Soon though!

There also seems to be a good bit of interest in my pincushion idea, so look for more info on that in the coming weeks!

Indigo Pictures (since it is blue Tuesday and all)

In an effort to check another item off the list, I thought I'd rinse out the yarn and roving from the indigo dyeing class. . . finally.  Besides -- it's blue Tuesday so I guess it was meant to be. 

This stuff was really difficult to photograph.  I think the photo above is a pretty good representation, but I had to mess around with the saturation a bit.  Look at the attempts:

Flash, no flash, by the sunny window, away from window -- it went on and on until my batteries died.  Sheesh.

At any rate, these are pictures of three different dyed fibers: light wool, greyish wool and light BFL roving.  I took this picture  (these many pictures) before I rinsed them out for the first time ever after having died them 2 1/2 weeks ago.  I was hoping to document any color change. 

Upon rinsing, the light yarn and roving gave up pretty much no dye.  The super dark yarn gave up a bit though.  As I type they are soaking in a warm, lovely scented bath:

Tomorrow the batteries should be fully charged and the yarn and roving should be relatively dry.  Can the nice dark blue skein retain it's lovely color?  Only time will tell.

Amazon & Merlot

These are the names I have given to colorways 4 & 3 respectively.  I like how both of these spun up.  Now it's time for the swatching.

And speaking of spinning (& Amazon actually). . . this arrived today:

The Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning -- and it is big!  It's like a textbook.  I can't wait to take a look inside.  I've heard it pretty much covers *everything* you would ever need to know about spinning.  I've also heard that his style is a bit off-putting to some.  We shall see.

Also in the box:

Yeah!!!!

Desperation

Okay, desperation is a little strong.  But what does a knit blogger post when there isn't much to post?  Yep, sock-in-progress pics.  Here are the Trekking 100's.  Now that I'm a soccer mom (yikes!) I've been getting a bit of sock knitting done at the weekly practices.

So why post a sock in progress?  It's more that the weather is dark and gloomy -- hence too difficult to get decent pictures -- than a lack of things to show.  I do have that "Amazon" colorway spun, plied and washed.  And I spun up "Merlot" too.  I do have a picture of that:

It's rested for a couple of days on the spindle now, so I should be able to Andean ply it tonight.

I've spent a lot of time reading this past week though.  I'm making my way through Eragon and I'm liking it quite well.  Sure you can tell he was pretty young when he wrote it, but it's still impressive.

I also picked up a couple of old needle arts books while out thrifting this week.  They cover everything from knitting to macrame.  I'll try to scan in some pictures later this week!

Pink!

It's quite cloudy here today, but I think this picture shows the color of this one pretty well.  This was colorway 6 and it spun up darker than it looked in the roving.  It seems to me that darker colors spin up a bit lighter than I expect and lighter colors spin up darker.  Strange.  But I like this color!  (Must be the inner girly-girl in me!)

I also spun up colorway 5.  It's still on the spindle, so it needs to get wound up into a hank and to have it's bubble bath.  Pictures later this week!

In book news, I finished HP6 and I loved it!  Just as good as all the others in my opinion and I can't wait for the next one.  Just the thing when you are looking for some fun, light reading.

Swatch of Colorway #1

Last week I spun up colorway #1 and plied it using the navajo plying technique to preserve the colors.  And you can see the stripey goodness in the swatch above.  (Here's the post that shows the 3-ply and here's a picture of the un-spun fiber.)  I'm pretty happy with it considering this was my least favorite colorway when it came out of the dye pot. 

And I have to say that the BFL (Bluefaced Leicester) is as much of a dream to knit as it was to spin.  The finished swatch is super soft, silky and even has a bit of drape. 

Technical info -- The 3-ply ended up at about 13 wpi for DK weight.  I knit it up on US 5's.

In other news. . . I'm homeschooling Maddie and today is our first official day of school!  Of course I started a blog for her  :)  It's called Homeschooling Maddie.

***Added Later***
Heh!  Just realized this swatch kind matches the cover of HP6!

Colorway 5 (or why photography makes me weep)

I wanted to show you a good photograph of the 2 ply I spun up on my Joy last night using colorway #5.  I used the tripod, the flash, again with no flash, on the table, on the floor.  ARGH!  Here's another photo:

The flash gave me too much shine -- BFL is kind of shiny I guess.  But I think that between the two photographs, you can get the general idea of what it looks like.

In answer to some questions about navajo plying, I direct you to my favorite spinning website once again -- The Joy of Handspinning has a great little video free online.  How cool is that?

And while I'm listing off resources, I have to tell you that one book that was used quite a bit on dyeing day was:

I've talked about this book before, but I really need to mention it again.  It proved itself as a great resource and that's the difference between a good book and a great one in my opinion.  So if you are interested in dyeing, I would certainly recommend Deb Menz's Color in Spinning.

Now I'm off to prepare some more pattern orders for shipment!  The Carroll Bag is on it's way to lots of yarns shops and will hit the online store some time in the next week!

* Yellow-Green *

Last night I spun up half of sample #1 on my drop spindle.  I tried to make the singles very fine becasue I knew that this first half was going to be navajo 3-plied.  Here's a close-up:

So not what I was expecting!  To tell you the truth, this was my least favorite colorway when it came out of the pot.  It was striped and very shocking with the saturated greens and yellows.  After pre-drafting things really softened up and after the plying -- well, it's a whole different thing!  Even with navajo-plying to preserve the colors, there is so much blending that it's almost a heathery solid. 

The other half of this colorway will be 2 plied for comparison.  Although that might wait while I spin up #5, which has jumped ahead in the standings after all the lovely comments today!

Color!

Here are my color samples all hanging out together.   While I had a lot of fun the last time Theresa and I got together for dyeing, I think this time was much more successful.  And let me tell you, that wasn't an accident.  Good dyeing means a lot of prep work!  More than half the day was spent getting the right tools and getting the dye stocks properly prepared.  But the results were worth the effort, don't you agree?

Colorway 1 . . .

Colorway 2 . . .

Colorway 3 . . .

Colorway 4 . . .

Colorway 5 . . .

Colorway 6 . . .

Colorway 7 . . .

Hopefully I will start spinning these up tonight.  Do you have a favorite?  Is there one you would like to see me spin first?  Leave me a comment and let me know.  Then go over and take a look at Theresa's.  I think my favorite colorway of the day was her intense red/orange/brown!

Teaser

No time to post now, but Theresa has many more pictures.  Go take a look!