Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Early Dye Garden 2012

A visitor






Alkanet

Woad
It's the middle of May and the dye garden is looking so good right now. It has completely filled in with no available space. This should be a good year for natural colours here.

Dyeing & Yarn Sample for Hat & Mitts.

The yarn for hat & mitts.

Sample skein & knit sample using 4.5mm & 4mm.

Greener Shades. Black3%. River Blue5%+Amazon Green5%+Black2%.



Rhubarb leaves. Top row with iron mordant. Bottom row with alum mordant.
Earlier in the spring I was given 3 fleece from a sheep farmer who raises the sheep for the meat. The sheep are probably kept indoors for the winter & had a lot of vm that needed to come out for it to be usable. Also there was a lot of oily dandruff that was stuck to the ends of the locks.
I found the best way to remove it all was to use a dog comb on both ends & then to drum card into batts. It came out very nicely.
I added some red & blacker black to the above black batts to make the colour a little more interesting. The idea is to have fun doing the fleece & making something useful for the farmer that he can use for himself & his family. So though the fleece was free. There has been a great deal of time invested in the project completion.
Still to do: spin it all, knit a few pair of hats & mitts. This is a medium wool for outerwear only.
Fun & a lot of satisfaction.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Knit Sample Results Using Greener Shades.

Brit. Milk Sheep dyed with alum mordant & dandelion & marigold.
BFL Sock Yarn. Homespun. 2 ply. Greener Shades Dyes. Spun, then dyed.

The 4 small skeins from the top 4 batts shown in previous post. 1 is on the left, 2 is at top, 3 at right & 4 at bottom.



The knit samples. 2 ply. 4.5mm knitting needles.