The spinning story part three

After the fairly successful if somewhat smelly and rough blue fibre the next step was to make something soft and squashy from a nicer fibre.

I had one plait of fibre in my stash, it was pinks, light purple and grey. None of these are really my kind of colours so I did two singles using a third of the plait each and another 30g of a darker purple I had dyed myself as a trial.

These were plied together to give a stripy effect.

The remaining third of the plait will be spun and navajo plied later on.

I split the roving a lot down its lengthwise, probably ten or more times to give a really thin roving to work from. This meant only a little drafting needed to be done as it was spun so solved the problem of taking too long to draft.

I also made a special effort to treadle slowly.

I am really pleased with how this came out, it is nicely squashy and not at all twisty. I had hoped to make a sock weight but it is probably thicker than DK (worsted) weight.

The next challenge will be to get the same squishiness with a thinner yarn. I need to do some fibre shopping first though :D

If there's fibre I will find it!

Ok, so it was not exactly hidden, it was sitting in a tent waiting to be bought.

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We went to another show today, the Asby de la Zouch agricultural show. Lots of different animals to see this time- sheep, cattle, alpacas, horses, rabbits, ferrets, dogs as well as lots of other things to look at like dancing diggers, craft and food tents, show jumping and trade stands.

Sheep, of course:

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Alpaca with attitude: "You looking at me?!"

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Is it normal to look at anything fluffy and think "I wonder if I could spin that"?
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I got excited when I rounded the corner in one of the craft tents and saw a line up of spinners with wheels, a big display of handspun yarn and knitted items. No fibre though (sob!). The second time round I had a nice chat with a couple of them, they let me pet some silk roving, gave me the name of a rovings suppliers and told me that I should go to Woolfest in Cumbria next year (I think all spinners are enablers!).
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Fortunately there was another small stall selling some roving and yarn. Most of the fibre was unlabelled so I opted for a 50g bunch of Cheviot x Border Leicester. The label says it is by Moro Rovings.
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Finally a stroll over to the WI craft competition, I eyed up the hand knit socks and was very interesting to read the comment cards, think the competitions are not open to non members though.
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Techniques- Oven dyeing fibre

Have been wanting a way to cut down on my clingfilm use, increase the amount of fibre and I can dye and limit felting problems. This oven dyeing tutorial has definite possibilities so am saving the page. When I have given it a go I might do my own set of photos if it all works out.

Greenhouse dyeing

At knit group a while back we were talking about how some people dye yarn in their car on hot days and every time I have got in the car for the last two or three weeks I have thought about it, but not got round to organising some.

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On Monday I had a bit of a dyeing session (photos to come on FO Friday), as I was handpainting roving I thought I would try a small sample. The car was at work with my OH so I decided to use my mini greenhouse instead. I have tried it for rising bread dough in the past, which worked well so I thought it had potential.

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The handpainting and wrapping clingfilm was done in the usual way, then I sat it on a roof tile that was hanging around the garden and put it in to cook.

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To show you it really is a greenhouse (the dye parcel is the slightly sad looking bundle top left):

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Dye parcel in close up, I closed the door and left it for about 24 hours, with just occasional prodings and temperature checks.

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Since it did not puff up in the way of a stove top steamed parcel I put a thermometer in with it to have an idea of how hot it got. Not that I know how hot it needed to be.
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The moment of truth was the next morning when I unwrapped it. To be honest I was expecting a lot of mess with dye running everywhere but was pleasantly suprised to find very little residual dye, a little more than a typical steamed parcel, but still not much and the colours stayed nice and strong.
Even when I gave it a wool wash soak only a little extra came out:
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The weather was good yesterday, so I dried it outside without any trouble.
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There's about 10g there, not sure what it will be, but that is for another day. I am keen to get spinning it but am trying to resist as I already have a spinning project on the go.

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I will definitely be giving greenhouse dyeing another go, it seems to work and after all its free heat, better for the environment and gives something to talk about.

How I ended up with green hands

As well as spinning I thought I would try using some dye to see what I could make.
The general idea behind the dying and spinning is to make each project have more crafty hours and slow down my yarn consumption :)
As a trial for my first batch I dyed a small sample of yarn and superwash roving with each of the dye solutions.
Using Jaquard dye, distilled white vinegar and steaming to fix the colours all took really well with almost no left over dye when I rinsed the samples the next morning.


I am waiting for delivery of a few more colours to complete the range so those will follow.
Obviously I got carried away and had to do a spinable (is that a word?) length of roving as well.
I was particularly worried about felting the roving in the process but it has come out fine and I have spun about half of it so far.

Hopefully if I dye a second length of about the same weight and ply it together I will have enough to make some socks.

Oh and the green hands were because I managed to cut a hole in my gloves without realising- doh!