A Beautiful Day for the Blues

Yesterday was a beautiful day here in Dela-where. It was just the right kind of day for dying some wool. I’m nearing the bottom of a big bag o’ Romney wool ("Sally") from SkyLines Farms. This wool, from the lovely Sally, is wonderful to dye. Even though I’m a beginner at the whole dying business, I was able to produce fantastic results with my very first pot. The one drawback is that the process fills the house with the tangy aroma of vinegar. Oh, well. It’s a small price to pay. Just look at that basket full of fluffy sky-blue wool just begging to be spun into something wonderful! If I can nail down this whole posting-pictures-to-Blogger issue, I'll share.

The Sally I dyed just before St. Patrick's day is taking shape as a pair of socks. If you haven't tried knitting socks, give it a go. They're portable, quick, and a great blank canvas for trying out all sorts of fancy-schmancy stitches. My favorite part of the entire process is turning the heel. There's something almost magical about creating a gently cupped piece of fabric in just a few easy rows. Let me tell you: once you've turned your first heel, there's no turning back.

As if I don't have enough fiber to play with, I'm expecting half a fleece of CVM/Romeldale sometime next week ... mere days after this week's shearing. Such excitement!

Naturally, since it's spring, I expect to be awash in golden retriever fur starting right about *achoo!* now.

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!