Which-Crafts?

Whee! I’ve been wanting to try this for a while, I am such a color whore, that I figured it would be really cool to try dying

my own fiber. I had to get all my ducks in a row (QUACK!), which I finally did

and my mom and I painted the basement a rainbow this weekend giving this a try. I read up a ton on the web, and generally followed the basic instructions at Spinning Athena . We used Jacquard acid dyes, and regular white vinegar. My mom has done some fiber dying of silk, cotton, and rayon in the past, but this was a first for both of us with wool and using these kind of acid dyes.

I had 1 lb of merino to dye and 2 lbs of BFL (the BFL is for my Dye/Spin/Knit-along project. I did the merino in 2 batches; to the right is the first one after I wrapped it up and put it into the pot to steam. The colors didn’t stay that bright, and I will have to muck around with the dye strengths a bit to help retain the color depth and density that I want.

The picture on the left is what it looked like after it was washed, rinsed and dried. Its a bit more pastel than it looks in the picture and I suspect that it will lose more color when I wash it after I spin it.

For this the “punk easter basket” colorway, I used squeeze bottles to get the dye in place. For my next two batches I did it much more free form. The 3nd time, I was aiming for a cranberry with a little lighter pink and some darker burgundy. And well - it looked great going into the steaming pot . . . but it turned out really a delicate barbie/candy pink.

My mom is planning on using all of her dyed fiber for Nuno felting, and with that in mind she did all of her fiber with deep stripes of carefully orchestrated color, she spent a lot of time mixing up specific colors that she was going for.
I am planning on spinning all of my fiber, and for most of it, I wanted a heathery yarn, so I wanted a more subtle colorway to work with. I laid out my fiber, and then mixed up 3 or so main colors in pitchers and then poured them over the fiber sort of randomly and let them mix themselves with a little smooshing of the dyes together.

My last batch was the BFL (for the Dye/Spin/
Knit-Along), I really wanted a sort of green/blue pattern. I laid out the fiber, and poured on mostly turqoise and blue dyes with a little black and a little yellow. I think that the turquoise, isn’t sticking in the fiber as well as it should, and once again, I need stronger dyes. The results are very pretty, but once again much lighter than I was going for, and a little more blue than blue/green. But lest I sound down about it, I really like the result (even if it wasn’t what i had planned), and I think it is going to work very well for the vest I plan to knit out of it.
I was a little concerned because the fiber looked a little felted and didn’t really want to have to card it all before i spun it. But once I started ripping it apart it was soooo soft, it spun up like a dream. The Pink fiber in the picture above is all prepped and ready to spin. I spun up a 1/2 a bobbin last night, fairly fine, and it was dreamy soft, and I can’t wait to ply it and see the final product.