Monday, March 12, 2007

Sally Goes Green

Yesterday was my first adventure in dying. Since I have so much Sally (Romney, from Skylines Handspinning Fleeces), that was the wool of choice.

After a trip to Costco for a gonzo-sized bottle of vinegar, I was good to go. I had the Jacquard acid dyes, one of my grandmother's ancient cooking pots, a wool squisher (aka a flat, tongs-like whisk), and plastic tub. I even had a Tyvek lab coat to keep my clothes their original colors.

Since I love green, that was the color du jour. Being a newbie, I put in a tad too much dye the first go, and the first batch looked like the algae that grew on a neighbor's pond in the long, long ago when I was a kid. As I dyed each batch, I somehow managed to stuff more and more wool into the pot -- hey, why take hours when I could just take maybe 20 minutes? Tsk.

An old screen door and a window screen made a wonderful make-do yarn dryer, and the entire green wad was dry when I got back from work today. Here's how it looks:

And this is how the same wool looks after I used a haircomb for the first rough "carding":
I have no idea what I'm going to make with my newly dyed wool, but it looks to me like I'm good to go for St. Patrick's Day!

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