The upside of SLC is that it is desert, so I can dye in the morning and spin at night if I so desire.

I have photos of a bunch of stuff I’ve made and not posted.

First of all I got a new spinning wheel…a Kromski Minstrel. I love it and it’s beautiful too. Now that I’ve gotten the feel for double drive, I really like it.

Of course a new spinning wheel means some test spinning. I realized that somehow none of the red/pink dyes I own made it to Utah. So cool colors it is!

Here are my first few skeins while I was getting a hang of the Minstrel.

I also spun up some 2ply lime/purple but then I immediately knit it into a headband so there’s no straight up yarn shot.

Saving the best for last… This is the yarn I spun up for my Spin to Knit Secret Pal. Now if she ever replied to my emails I might send it to her.

I decided to make a 2 ply yarn using falklands 56 wool. So to start off I kettle dyed 2 lengths of wool. Both balls primarily used yellow and lime green. The left also had hot pink, brown, and a little olive. The right ball had some darker greens and olive.

Then I spun them both as singles.

Then I plied them together, making some hot pink supercoils.

Here is the finished product with the inspiration. I was really happy with how it came out.

You can see some more photos on the flickr set.

This is a combination of white and coral wool liberally carded with gold angelina. I made the coral by carding pink and orange together. I think it came out pretty outrageous.

It’s about 3oz and 72yds.

My friend didn’t even know I did they dyeing which I take as a compliment. It’s couture baby! I also did the inside band on smaller needles with a single strand, while the rest of that is on 10.5s using 2 strands of Knit Picks Andrean Silk.

Altogether it’s 140 yds and 6oz. I’m planning on knitting a hat out of it. This is one of the first yarns I’ve made that I’ve really planned out and had an intended use for. Plus it’s soo soft. I can’t wait to get knitting.

I also got around to dyeing some yarn for another hat project of mine. My friend asked me to knit him a camo hat but the only camo yarns I could find are 100% acrylic. Yuck! So I bought 3 skeins of Knit Picks in Andrean Silk and skeined it with 2 strands. Then I kettle dyed it with brown, chestnut, forest green, olive, yellow, and black. Or those are the dye colors I used to get the colors. I tend to a dash of this and that until I get the colors I want.

I love kettle dying. I only started doing it since I did dyeorama, but I love the results. I took some photos of the dyeing in progress but I’m having issues with that camera. So all I’ve got is this photo of the test swatch I did. I think the colors came out great and this will look fab as a camo hat.

So I got out my dye buckets and soaked my yarn. If you recall awhile ago I had purchased a 2lb cone of natural dk cotton. I had skeined it up as needed for dyeing so all I needed to do was dye. I purchased 4 colors of Jacquard Procion MX for this cobalt blue, lemon yellow, bright green, and brilliant orange.  My goal was to have a bright slightly greenish yellow, a yellowish leafy green, and a bright blue. I realize that I didn’t need the bright green to accomplish this, but I’m lazy.

The colors came out sooo well! I’ve turned into one of those people who do a little dash of this and that to make my dye formulas. I guess that is a sign that I must understand how color theory works, but really it’s because I’m lazy and impatient.  The only color I modified was the leafy green because it was originally too muddy and I wanted it more yellow. I just used the cobale blue staight for the blue and it’s a gorgeous color.

The yarn still wasn’t dry this morning, but maybe when I get home I can wind some balls and get cracking. I will post some photos of the dyeing results too.

Once I had all my dyestocks made and my fiber soaking it was time to get ready to dye. I had 2 skeins of sock yarn. I had been planning to paint them, but I’ve been reading the Twisted Sister Sock book and I’m intrigued by kettle (hot) dyeing. So I decided to give it a whirl. First up I dyed some purple and bright green to get the feel for it. Then I got working on the dyeorama yarn.

The olive I got is very brown so I mixed it with kelly green to get real olive color. Then I picked out chartreuse, gun metal (dark blue) and sky blue. Kettle dyeing seems very “artistic” to me. You can dribble here, squish there, pour here to get very interesting results. Painting yarn is effective, but seems rather mathmatical to me. I need to be a little more patient in my hot dyeing, since I forget to let one dye exhause before I add another. Although that probably makes some interesting effects.

Anyway, I love the way it came out. The color bands are very small, so I was quite interested to see how it knit up. Since certain colors are used more overall, it should have the same effect as larger bands from a distance, but be more varied close up.

I finally got good brown dye so that was a theme for my wool dyeing. I did some brown and blue, and some brown and turquoise. I dyed some tinkle and some wool brown to card together later. This was all on the stove. Then I had 8oz of roving that won’t fit on my stove, so I sort of splattered it with pink and orange and microwave steamed it. Then I dyed some firestar orange for carding. Note to self: get a big roaster pan for dyeing.

All of that dyeing took 3-4 hours and made my back ache. But now I’ve got lots to play with! You can check them out on flickr. They are all the most recent photos.