Y Lloeren

Dyeing

I've done a fair bit of dyeing over the last few months. I've been experimenting with handpainting yarn and fibre and I've also immersion dyed some yarn. I've tried steaming the handpainted fibre/yarn in the microwave and in a pot on the cooker. I'm following a two step process for the immersion dyeing. I add the yarn to the pot  without stirring the dye liquid first for a deliberately uneven effect. Once the dye is exhausted, I rinse the yarn and let it dry. It then gets immersed in a different colour at a later date, again I don't stir the dye liquid.

The yarn on the left has had two immersions. The yarn on the right has only had one.

Sometimes Meleri joins me during the handpainting sessions. I always like her results, sometimes more than mine. I spun this BFL (I think):

into this navajo plyed yarn (probably for socks):

Bright but good I feel.

Some more dyed fibre/ yarn pics:

I want to try immersion dyeing fibre next, perhaps with more than one colour at a time. I also need to give that pink yarn a second dip - probably in red. For base yarn I've been using white Regia Silk 4 ply from a LYS in St. Méen Le Grand for the immersion dyed yarn and a natural Trekking blank from Get Knitted for the handpainted skein that's on the above right. I have four more of the Trekking Blanks to try, they come in 100g skeins. The Regia Silk comes in 50g balls so I have to wind them into skeins before dyeing, I have another 200g of that to play with. I'd like to try and find a more local source to bulk buy yarn blanks for dyeing eventually.

Another bagful

Only this time it's smaller, much smaller.

This contains an alpaca fleece that I bought this summer from a small alpaca farm near Belle Isle en Terre which is about an hour way. I had quite a wide choice but chose this one because it was pretty much the same colour as my hair. I plan to turn it into a loose jacket of some kind. Possibly the Kenobi jacket by Norah Gaughan from Knitscene Fall 06. They also threw in about 400g of baby alpaca which is also very soft.

Here is a small amount of each (baby alpaca is on the right):

I carded the baby alpaca (and discovered that if I did it while Rob was in the room that it made him wheezy for hours afterwards) and rolled it into batts (as opposed to rolags) and spun it worsted. Here is a picture of the finished skein:

Closeup with a stitch marker for context:

Three Bags Full

For the last two years we have visited the Ecomusée De Pays De Rennes for their annual Shearing Day (La Tonte). Each year the shearers have very kindly given me a free fleece. Unfortunately, I don't get told the breed of sheep and, yes, I know now that I should've asked. You can see the breeds of sheep and goats that they keep here. I do know that they haven't given me Ouessant fleece. (Interestingly, I recently found out that one of our neighbours (Hilary at Le Fosso) keeps Ouessants so maybe next year? I think the fleeces are probably either Bleu De Maine or Avranchin looking at the descriptions on the site. This year's fleece weighed over 7kg - it was the heaviest they'd had that day.The fleeces are not skirted before I get them and the sheep are not kept coated do there is a lot of dirty work to do before I wash them.

The photo above shows the two washed fleeces in bags I knocked up from some fabric I had lying around. The rightmost bag (also the smallest) contains the fleece from last year. The other two bags contain this years fleece. It took over a week to get that fleece skirted, washed and dried.

Some of the fleece drying:

I've carded and spun some of the first fleece. I tried spinning it long draw - I definitely need more practice at that technique. It came out very bulky, thick and thin but also very soft. I have since crocheted and fulled it into a small birthday present for Meleri (more details are here on Ravelry):

As for the rest of the two fleeces, I think that I will probably dye the fleece first and then card it. I think that it could be nice combed but I don't have any combs yet. Although the sight of the two large bags containing the second fleece are making me yearn for a drumcarder.

Oops

The post that appeared here briefly wasn't a complete post, I meant to save it as a draft but accidentally published it instead.

It will be back in a more complete form when I finish taking the photos for it.

Umm.. Hello?

I bet you think that I haven't been blogging, don't you? The think is, I have been - mentally. I have written dozens of posts in my head, they just seem to be reluctant to leave the cosy confines of my mind (cosy, my mind?) and get written up.

I'm going to write several of these posts now and set them to show up one per day for the next few days.