A Few Sheep Shy of a Farm

Immersion dye #1

Now this was something I hadn’t done in a while! Looking back on my notes it would appear that the last time I really dyed was THREE YEARS AGO!  Yup! Three whole years since I put up the dyepots!

So, after I dusted everything off I managed to put together 4 batches of roving to dye.  I did 1.5lbs of each color to give myself enough to play with for swatching, yarn variations and a little extra, just in case.  I had narrowed my color choices to something in the cool colors but hadn’t made a final decision on color even as I started dyeing.  I knew I wanted the color above as the base color but somehow managed to end up with a slightly darker shade than I was hoping for . . .

Next up I tried a batch of purple . . .

Immersion dye #2

which turned out to be very purple.  I really like the color but since I had planned to blend the fibers I’m thinking that would be too variegated for the texture I want to knit with this sweater.  Good thing I planned for extra fiber, huh?

So then I took a good look at the blue I was starting with and decided I needed to lighten it up just a bit from what it was, so I came up with this:

Immersion dye #3

And then because I wanted the final product to be a Mediterranean Blue I added this:

Immersion dye #4

Bright, isn’t it?

Once everything was done cooking and drained etc. It all went outside on a drying rack:

Drying Fiber

The sun was a little bright when I took this so the colors don’t show clearly . . .  here is a better shot of the colors:

Fiber colors

Okay, that’s all you get for this post   Next up we’ll blend them on the drum carder and see what the spun singles look like.  Isn’t this fun?