The weekend's dyeing

Guild on Saturday, so as it was a 'bring stuff to sell' day I thought I'd trawl all my fibre out for its last outing before Wonderwool. I wasn't really expecting to sell anything, so was very pleasantly surprised to take nearly £100 home. This will be reinvested at Adelaide Walker's in the next week or so.

Sunday was spent toiling over bubbling dyepots again (after we'd been out for lunch at Salts Mill and I'd dutifully turned up at Ma's with flowers, a card, and my primrose photograph framed up).

When I was up at Adelaide WAlker's last week (my second visit of the week!) I noticed he had some Teeswater tops. Now Wensleydale used to be ubiquitous in the hand-dyed tops market, but seems to have disappeared - it felts soon as look at, and I think people got wise to this. But Ian gave me a length of Teeswater to try, and I'm really pleased - it fluffed up on drying and has retained its luster and silkiness. And a named breed always adds to the appeal. He has some Cheviot too, which makes fabulous hard-wearing yarn and takes dye well, so I think some of that will be called for. This length was shoved into the Beech pot.

This is the interesting result of changing my red and orange dyes. The Brick follows the recipe for last year's Birch, but obviously the new orange is much more dominant than the previous. So I shifted everything along a bit and created Beech. Colours aren't completely correct as I wasn't outside - these were all taken on the creel as they dried yesterday afternoon and evening. The entire flat is smelling like a wet sheep liberally sprinkled with vinegar, and will continue to do so until the end of June and past Woolfest.

Mulberry. Perhaps a little bluer in real life. I wanted a good reddish-purple and I'm pretty pleased with this one.

This isn't quite what I was aiming for, but but it's still rather
pretty. I wanted a dark, murky, foresty green, but ended up with something a bit lighter. Mirkwood.

I was aiming for an aquatic sea-blue/green - I might take it a bit greener next time, or darker. Triton.

Not a good photograph for colour here - I took it at 6ish this morning and there was no natural daylight to speak of. It's alpaca dyed in Flora which has a better reproduction below. But the sheen from the fibre's lovely, and it's fluffing beautifully on drying.

This is the 'Mallorn' project that's rapidly heading towards the end. It's specifically designed for knitting on while watching television or reading - every other row is plain purl. I'm currently thinking about the edging treatment, and I think I know what I'm going to do. The yarn is lovely even if I say so myself - it was a silk and merino blend from P&M at Woolfest in 2007, spun from the fold in small chunks to keep the colours as short as possible. It'll block out very nicely.