Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Dyeing and Spinning

Last week was a whirlwind of dyeing fibers for the launch of Feathered Fish Fibers at Make One on Saturday, which was a great success. To give you an idea of it, I took this picture:

rainbow
 A rainbow of wool! And that wasn't all, there was stuff still drying when I took this. I dyed up shetland, argentinian wool, corriedale, alpaca, superwash/nylon, finn, and polwarth. One of my favorite forays into dyeing was this:
Sock Spinner's Set
A deep, dark, and mysterious blend of colors I called "Grindylow" as it reminded me of those magical creatures lurking in the depths. I also dyed one with a rainbow of colors under the black I called "Dark Prism", although I didn't get a picture of it before I ran out the door with it. (I didn't even get it braided before I brought it so I did a little last-minute braiding there!) Those were on the wool/nylon blend for socks, and I'm getting geared up to do more of those.

The CSR fleece sampling is going well. I took a picture of my lace swatch of the three ply:
sample swatch

I don't like it as much as the 2 ply, but it's growing on me. I decided to carry on and try a cabled 4-ply, so I spun up some more singles and made some 2-plies with lots of twist:

Ready for plying

I got out my plying spindle*, ready to- woah, wait a minute.

Fabled Fish BFL

not ready to ply. Full of some BFL I dyed up but ended up slightly compacted and felted in spots, so I sacrificed (ha!) and started spinning it myself. So, ok, I wound that off and then started plying.

The finished yarn:

Cabled 4 ply

136 yards, and 45 grams, and 14 WPI. It is somewhere in the region of sport/DK. I am pondering what to knit with it, realizing that I have enough for a pair of fingerless gloves. However, I don't want white ones, so I will probably dye this up before knitting it.

I was thinking I might try a 5-ply too, but honestly I don't think I need to. I know I like the 2 and 3 ply yarn; the only drawback is that I was thinking of spinning a worsted weight yarn, so I'd have to adjust my drafting, which isn't easy.

Oh, and speaking of fingerless gloves, I have another pattern in the boiler. I realized it has been a while since I published one, so I've been pondering what to publish next. These are some mitts I knit quite some time ago, but I lost my pattern notes. I found them yesterday (yay!) so I'll knit up another pair and type it all out.

Here is a picture of them:

Moorish Lattice Mittens

Click here for my Ravelry project page and more pictures.
This was a handspun, so the lattice stitch pattern gets a bit lost, but I'll take a better picture when I've knitted them again. They require about 50 grams of sock yarn. What do you think, are you interested?

*This spindle is not really a "plying" spindle, I call it that because it has a nice long shaft and can hold more yarn than my other ones.

1 comment:

Avi Abrams said...

I simply love the rainbows... Dark Prism... and elfish leafs patterns on samples... lovely.