Dying Samples

Posted on November 9, 2009 by UnionSt
Dye Color Samples:

I have been wanting to do this for a long time-I use Sabraset dyes for wool, silk and nylon etc. and have never made a color chart. When I was in art school, one of the assignments was a dye notebook. We took the colors of Procion dyes for cotton and divided them up, then dyed samples for each dye, and each dye in combination: 25% red/75% blue, 50% red/ 50% blue, 75% red/25% blue for example – then we split combinations amongst ourselves and we each ended up with a really great resource for color recipes. I treated myself to Barbara Parry’s book “Hand-Dyeing” (which I really like by the way) and she has a really great way to dye alot of samples really quickly using canning jars. I had a lot of difficulty with splotches and would not ever use this method for anything but samples, but you can’t beat it for quick and dirty! I have absolutely added it to my list of favorite dye techniques!
In the sabraset dyes I usually use these primaries: 2 yellows – sun yellow and mustard yellow; 3blues – navy, royal blue and turquoise; and 3 reds – deep red, scarlet and magenta. So I set myself a project of making color wheels for various red/blue/yellow combinations. I got through 3 sets this weekend which gives me SO much information!
First, I wound out a million tiny hanks of yarn! I had a skein of undyed lace-weight yarn from Knit Picks so I used that and would out little 10 yard skeins. I had some silk fabric as well, so I cut some swatches of silk to pop into each dye-bath as well. Each hanks and silk set weighed 3 grams. I mixed up 1% stock solutions for each of the 8 primaries, and figured out what combinations I would make up, knowing I had 3 ml of dye per jar to dye each sample at about 1% depth made it easy to choose- 100%. then a 50/50 and 33/66 combinations. So the dye went int each of 13 canning jars, then 87 ml of water to bring the total to 90 ml of liquid then I popped in the wool and silk samples (which had been soaking for about an hour in a pre-soak solution of 1 gallon of water with 6 Tbsp of citric acid and 2 tsp synthropal). I cleverly labled each lid with what was to go inside the jar! Always thinking! Gave everything a good stir as they went into the jars:
Each set of primaries took 13 jars since I did one jar of 1ml red, 1 ml blue and 1 ml yellow for a brown. I stirred them again before putting the lids on the jars and giving them another shake before carrying them into the kitchen and putting them in the pot. This set-up is not the greatest but it worked: 3″ of water in the bottom, then the wire canning jar holder then a pizza pan perched on the wire to hold the jars:


Stuck some foil over top to get a decent seal and steamed the jars for half an hour – totally followed Barbara Perry’s directions from in the book:

Turned off the heat, carefully removed the jars and let them cool (you can hear the lids all popping shut as they cool! Just like jam!) Gave everything a rinse and dried them:

Here is what I got!

I want to do some other color combinations using the violet and brown……… so easy to get carried away!

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Some yummy Cormo

Posted on October 21, 2009 by UnionSt

This came out alot greener than I thought it would, but I really like it:

Here are the singles-


And a badly exposed close-up!

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Dyed More Stuff!

Posted on October 14, 2009 by UnionSt

Did some Crock-pot dying, got my system figured out!

Roving, these are both Cormo from Shepherd Susie (whose Fiber Farm is moving to Virginia and will be henceforth be known as Juniper Moon!)

And used the extra dye up on two hanks of laceweight from Knit Picks:

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Last of the Fancy Yarns on Etsy

Posted on October 4, 2009 by UnionSt

I am posting these last two skeins of yarn on Etsy tonight – LunaKnits – I am working on closing down that shop so I lowered most of the prices on the knit scarves and shawls. Anyway, these are the last, begged, borrowed, unraveled and stole to piece together enough bits:

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Spinning, I’m Spinning!

Posted on September 23, 2009 by UnionSt

Yep – I’m spinning, got to plying, tomorrow yarn pics!

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More Handspun

Posted on June 20, 2009 by UnionSt

Quickie post – finished spinning up the dyed roving from last post, plyed it with some nice blue I had dyed several months ago – nice nice!

Pretty yummy! I hope to finish up my MVFF/HVFF cormo/angora tomorrow! It is supposed to rain all day – how unusual for this spring – so I have a spinning/sewing day planned.

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Spinning and Dying!

Posted on May 31, 2009 by UnionSt


I spent time this weekend with actual fiber! Yay! I spun up the natural brown bonus wool from Martha’s Vinyard Fiber Farm’s Fall 09 spinning share – it smells and feels wonderful! A bit itchy for a hat, but I am hoping to add something to it, enough to get a vest out of it, and I really need to figure out woolen spinning because this would have been nicer if it were loftier, but it fluffed up a bit when I washed it.


I had some blue cooreidale roving I wanted to spin to finish a sweater with, so I spun that up into singles, an had some roving I had “voo-doo” dyed in a pot last fall – it spun up beautifuly and got me all inspired to dye, so dyed some roving to ply with the blue, and I random dyed some of the Cormo/Angora roving from MVFF – yummy! I can’t wait to spin that up!


In the pot and then all dry and in roving – hope to post spun yarn in a couple of days! I am happy to be back to spinning.

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Lost Month of April

Posted on May 1, 2009 by UnionSt

OK – it is May already and I lost most of April stuck in the hospital with DVT – deep vain thrombosis or a blood clot in my leg. Got complicated, got fixed but now my garden extravaganza is on delay – we will see how quickly I get mobile!

Anyway – if you have not discovered Martha’s Vinyard / Hudson Valley Fiber Farm http://www.fiberfarm.com/ you should whether you are fiber-y or not. there is a webcam set up in the nursery pen http://www.fiberfarm.com/lambcam where you can watch baby angora goats (and shortly baby cormo sheep) leap, bounce, flap their ears and wiggle their tails – it is VERY addictive! The farm(s) are a small, family operated business and following the farm blog is really great! Take is from someone who has had a lot of time on her hands!!

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Fresh Wool and Rain Barrels

Posted on March 25, 2009 by UnionSt
-Wool-

Well, a friend of mine commented that she had never seen undyed wool, so I thought I’d post a pic of the fleeces I have that are just waiting for my attention! They smell so good and fleecy. from left to right: Lincoln/Merino, Lincoln/Corriedale, and light and dark Border Leicester fleeces. The cats were very much in love for the first couple of weeks of their aquaintence, however, upon realizing their overtures of friendship and mutual butt sniffing were rebuked, have ignored the bags since.

Also, here is this weekend’s project – rainbarrels!

Scored 6 from the local Pepsi botteling plant (note the Mountain Dew sticker, yes they really smelled up the car!) 6 is how many will fit into a Chevy Venture mini-van by the way. Gave one to my neighbor so we are left with 5. Figure I have nearly an acre of roof I am happy to use some of the water from it for the lawn! I am not sure of the asphalt shingles, apparently some have a level of undesireable chemicals so you want to check the water before using it on a veg. garden. Got a nifty diverter so I don’t have to worry about overflow of the barrels from the gutter. Will post pics in process. Got great rainbarrel instructions here: http://home.comcast.net/~leavesdance/rainbarrels/construction.html

Here is the sexy diverter: http://www.gardeners.com/Downspout%20Diverter/33-991,default,pd.html

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