I love boxes!!

Even more when they are filled with this:

This arrived friday, 3kilo wool roving, 250 gram silk, 250 gram bamboo, 500 gram mohiar, dyeset of 11 colours, 10 gram tins from ashford and some brown/purple beeds i really like.I really love the wool, it is so soft...so much better than the fleeces I started with. Can't wait to feel how it spins...

Yesterday was open house at my sewing school so I spent the whole day sewing there, finished a 1/2 scale strapples bathing suit (picture will follow later). When I got home, the dyeing party started!!!

The first 250 grams of wool was dyed in Dylon Pagode Red. It came out of the pot a little felted, but I managed to rescue it all. I dyed some silk with it, which came out all different shades of pink.

The second batch I dyed Dylon Cherry Blossom, this came out of the pot in a better shape. It is a little bit darker than the Pagode Red. In daylight you can see the difference better.

This is some Bordeaux. It started to rain outside so I had to hang it inside.

These three colours and the silk will be combined for a vest.

I also found some food colouring so I dyed this one orange/red. This was the first I tried in the microwave. It didn't come out saturated enough so I died it again with some Orange Ecoline, now it is really bright Orange! This will become a hat for a colleague.

I haven't tried the ashford dyes yet, I wanted to get some more practice dyeing with some stuff that is easier to get, so if I mess it up, at least I can get more dye.

Completely mine

well, after the sheep donated it's fleece that is...

So I arived home yesterday after work with my drumcarder and of course, had to use it right away. Here you can see the orange wool on the drumcarder.

I ended up with 2 nice big batts.

Here I am ready to spin the first bat. I used 1 1/2 batt and then the bobbin was almost full. I plied it with the navajo 3-ply method. When doing my research I really liked it because you only need 1 thread which you ply onto itself. As I don't have a lazy kate (yet) this was very appealing to me. With the red wool I made a 2-ply using the bobbin holders on the wheel and got tangled up. When doing the navajo 3-ply I found the thread was much easier to handle, but that could also been because I spun this wool better. I will try 2-ply again, but for now I think this is the way I will ply my yarns. Here you can see it drying.

I also did some dying on thursday. I used the purple eggpaint, and then added the red and blue I had left because again, I threw to much wool in the pot...It resulted into this:

And here you can see the end result of the Carmine from earlier this week.

I think this will end up a pretty solid colour too like the orange did.

Although I haven't tried the Dylon dye yet (I want to use them on carded batts) I couldn't help myself and bought some more colours: Bordeaux (one extra, I really like that colour), Olive Green (another colour I really like), Windsor Purple and Pagoda Red. I have saved 1/2 batt from the Orange because I really want to make some combined colour batts. The portion I spun will be used for a beanie for a colleague. But next, I am going to card the whole brown fleece first. Will start on that tomorrow. And I need to draw some bathing suit patterns for school, and the laundry, and some fleece washing, and house cleaning and I thought Sunday was a day to rest? That's what you get for working on Saturday once every 4 weeks, which was today..

Tonight I am going to knit on Moebius #3. It was a good thing I decided to frog it. It was way to big. I counted the stitches as I took it of the needle, measured how much to big it was and ended up casting only 2/3 of the stitches on #2!!!

So, I got myself some nice very dark chocolate with caramel and my blankie (it is cold here) and do a little Moebius Marathon!!

New Colours!!

So for the people who liked my greens (thanx 2bsewing)....I ran out of it...time for a change....
So yesterday I went for the Burned Sienna. Although I had to go to school yesterday evening I had to do some dyeing. I think I am showing all the signs of a heavy addiction..LOL
Before I went I filled the pot with wool, water, vinnegar and the watercolour. When I came home I immediately ran to the kitchen to turn on the heat and this is the result. Very Orange and I kind of really like it!! My colleague has been asking me for an orange hat and I think this will be it. I still have the orange watercolour, and will try that with some carded wool, and maybe in the microwave to see how that turns out. I think this will go great with some brown or red to.
Tonight I wanted to try out the Carmine. In the picture you can see it before it went on the heat. I just peeked in the pot and it looks very pink, almost fluorescent. I must really be putting to much wool in the pot so the colours turn out different than they probably should. I will see/show the final colour tomorrow. This might even go with the Orange to...
My drying station is working out very well too. On the right you can see my shelves. I am still not finished with them. Somehow there are some screws that wont do what I want them to do....go into the wood. The trash bin I bought at Ikea. I won't be using it as a trash bin, this will be where I will store my pattern paper. I have a lot of it as I draw my own patterns. The drying station is just an ordinary 3 story wash rack. I ripped up some cotton fabric to fit the surfaces, they are attached with clothes pins. When I washed/dyed the wool I put it on one of the pieces of cotton. Close it with a piece of thread so that the woll can't come out. Put it in the spinning cycle of the washing machine, take it upstairs and spread it out.
I still do some crocheting and trying to finish the triangular scarf/wrap. As far as the Moebius goes...I decided to frog it. I haven't even wanted to look at it for day. This to me is a sign I need to frog it and start new. If I don't it will end up in a box and I might find it in a few years. And I really like the Moebius idea/design. I guess I will do that tonight and cast on a new one and knit some so I can be happy to pick it up again...


Tomorrow my car has to go to the car doctor...It is getting dangerous to drive with...well not exactly for me, but for the people behind me. I could loose the exhaust pipe any moment now...

Well..time for moebius!!

My present for myself

I did it!!

I ordered a drumcarder. I really did it.

Yesterday while washing the wool and dyeing it I noticed how much it really is. I tried to do some handcarding, but that didn't feel good on my wrists. So yesterday I did some googling to find a nice carder I know I was first tempted to buy the junior carder because it was the cheapest, but I did some calculations and heavy thinking and realised I had some more to spend and to better invest in a piece of equiment that would fulfil my needs lnger than to go for the cheapest option and maybe in a years time realise that I needed something different. I found a drumcarder in Germany with Wollknoll which makes batts of 22x97 cm.

The watercoulour dyed wool turned out nice, I think the colour will hold, but I am going to test some of it later. I now have a batch on the stove with egg dye, but I think I put to much wool in it, it kept being very light. So I started out with one tablet of green, then put in another one, then because I found it very blue I also put in some yellow, and then because I found it to still be a lot of uncoloured wool I first threw in another bleu and ten minutes later a yellow one. Finally I also threw in the remaining watercolour "Dark Green"I had.

I now have no green left, so next up will be the reds, oranges and the purples. I will have to keep an eye out on the amount of wool I put in the pot, but this is my experimental stage (I hope it never ends....)

I will save some of the "white" wool to mix it in later withe the dark brown I have after I have spun enough of it to make a nice sleeveless vest.

The red I tried to spin turned out really nice, although very thick. When I tried to ply it it must have looked like some slapstick movie, I was constantly entangled in all thos threads. It was very hard to believe I was only trying to twine 2 threads, it felt like there were lots more!! I'll get the hang of it..

Tomorrow is another school night, but I will try to post some pictures of the dye batch from today and my wonderful wool-drying-mobile and ofcourse my first skein of yarn!

Little Update

Just a quick little update.

I just had to show the colours I created today!!
First, This is the one I dyed using the solution I used to dye the cotton in. Just added some vinnegar and let it simmer for an hour. This is rinsed and almost dry. As far as I can tell, this colour wil hold. It is a light minty green.

When that was cooled there was no pigment left in the pot so I decided to try something else. I wanted to try the watercolour. And as I thought I might want to combine these I went for the Deep Green:

As you can see, there are some parts in it that look a little blue. This one is still cooling of in the pot and I think I will rinse it tomorrow as I have no space to dry it (will need to build something for that). I just did a large portion of washed wool in my dyeing pot (formerly known as soup pot), added water until submerged, added a big splash of vinnegar. I think it was about 250 ml. Added the watercolour until I thought it looked good (approx. 25ml) and started the heat. When almost boiling turned down the stove and let it hang against boiling for a good hour.

Can't wait on how the other methods turn out!!!

If you want more information on the watercolour I used you can find it here. I have added an English link, but here in the Netherlands you can buy it at every craft/art material shop.