A Good Day to Dye

A couple of weeks ago I hosted a "good day to dye" event at my place.  I pulled all my dyes out of the cupboards and shed, dug up skeins of handspun yarn and all kinds of fibre and called my girlfriend.  She signed on and brought bags of loose fibre, rovings and skeins of yarn.  We had more than enough to play with.  The weather was perfect for this, sunny skies and the bugs stayed away for the most part.

Here is a photo essay of our day.

This is the dyeing studio a.k.a my back porch.

We threw some loose fibre into dye pots and we also painted skeins of yarn and then steamed them.  The skein being dyed here is from the fibre cleaned in my rain barrel experiments.

Here's my friend painting a merino roving.  After the painting, it got rolled up in cellophane, left to sit for a spell and them put into the steamer.

One view of the drying rack with all the finished projects.

Next day view of the drying rack.  When the rovings were fully dried, I opened then up and am very happy to announce there was no felting at all!

From left to right:
Blue and pink shiny fibre is caesin -- the silky fibre from milk proteins; grey/blue roving -- straight up corriedale from Humming Bee Farm; pink/orange roving -- merino/silk blend; grey/pink skein -- cheviot two-ply; yellow/blue skein -- polwarth two-ply spindle spun; blue/purple skein -- hodge-podge of singles hanging about the studio that got spun into two decent sized skeins.  Variety of fibres. This may be hard to believe and you may think I am making this up, but I actually have plans for every bit of fibre here and each skein of yarn. Stay tuned so I can prove to you it's true.