Fiber, Fiber and Yarn!

The promised pictures....well....some of them!

This picture doesn't really do the color justice. The yarn is a colonial slate blue. As you can tell from the pic in spots, it's a bit overspun, but really not too bad considering it's my first wheel spun yarn!

These are samples of the mohair I Kool Aid dyed some weeks back. This is what they carded up to look like. From the left is the Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade, Mango, Lemon-Lime, Grape and in the front Black Cherry. I placed a larger ammount of fiber in the Grape dye batch which caused it to dye uneven. Although I thought this was a major mistake, it turned out beautifully as the silvery white from the mohair comes up in the carding making a nice heathery color. Also I forgot to mix the Mango really well before dropping in fiber which gave me some really dark spots that were almost orange and some buttery yellow spots. That carded up beautifully as well!

This is the wool that I did up using the blue food coloring. In reality it looks more grey than blue...but carded out a lighter blue. Almost a faded denim color. This is currently being spun on the wheel and once spun a royal blue almost comes through. It will make an interesting yarn.


I dyed this sample skein of American Eskimo in Fruit Punch Kool Aid. The main reason I did this one was to time how long it would take to exhaust the dye batch. The mohair seemed to exhaust the dyebath quicker than the wool, so I wanted to see what the dog hair would do. Unfortunately this was also a leson on mixing too much dye batch for the ammount of fiber. :) I also didn't reskein it loosly like I should have so where the ties are, there are still white spots. All in all, it came out nice. I think if the dyebath had been smaller, it would have exhausted properly and in about the same time as the mohair.

Here is the link to the website that I found the directions for dyeing with Kool-Aid. http://www.thepiper.com/fiberart/koolaid/basic-howto.html

I know I promised knitting pictures. I forgot last night. Really, they aren't that exciting anyway....just two washclothes....lol. I started the swatch for checking gauge on the socks last night. (I'm trying to do this right.) Looks like I get to move up a few sizes in needles as I knit too tight for that needle set to produce the correct gauge. I'll finish the swatch just to be sure...then make my decision. I'm so awkward with two DPN's that I'm really trying to convince myselt that using four is not going to be that difficult. Ah the lies we tell ourselves to just get through.....lol.