Dyeing Adventure

I realized today that I never blogged about my dyeing adventure a few weeks ago.

I had bought a whole bag of Bluefaced Leicester white spinning fiber some time back, thinking I’d dye it first and then spin. I’ve discovered that it is a whole lot easier to felt unspun fiber than yarn, so after one attempt, I spun it first with plans to dye later. Here is the result.

The dye material is tickseed, or Coreopsis (with a bit of dried marigold I had saved from last year that wasn’t enough to dye anything by itself). John planted these in pots down by the lake, and I’ve been dead-heading them since they started blooming earlier this summer. I simmered in water for an hour or so, then let sit overnight (mostly because I ran out of time). The next morning I strained out the flowers, and in went the wool.

The wool was mordanted with a mixture of alum and cream of tartar to help the dye set. It all simmered for another hour, then I let it sit until it was cool. Then out of the dye pot, rinse, dry, and skein it up.

That is 366 grams of wool, about 790 yards total. I think it will make a nice rustic wrap of some sort.

I’m home from work today with a migraine, not getting a whole lot accomplished. It’s getting better at this point, though I still feel like somebody poured Karo syrup into my brain. It makes for a waste of a perfectly good day off.

And, because it’s my blog, and I can, I’m posting one more photo of my last finished project. I posted this on Facebook, and somebody commented that all it needed was a tiara. Here you go, Dorothy.

Though THIS is the one I really want.

So you suppose Princess Sofia will send that to me when she grows tired of it?

Author: Lorette

My name is Lorette. I learned to knit in 1999, and took up spinning in 2009. I'm a physician specializing in internal medicine, and live in the Pacific Northwest. Enjoy my blog! View all posts by Lorette