Oh how I missed you!

I'm still here, reading every single day.  I have been doing fiber related stuff, gearing up for my free time this summer.  I have been dyeing and making batts like a mad woman. I am contributing to the Phat Fiber box for June and July, so I have been trying to make my sample batts- June is done and the dyeing has been focused on my July batts.  I even made my 1st Etsy sale!  So in honor of that, I will be having a batt giveaway! I'm so stoked.....my very first giveaway! Can I hear a wooohooo??!! :) I will post about it on Monday, so stay tuned. 

Start to finish.......

I only had a chance to play with the green.  I used a bit of everything I dyed on Friday in the batts.  I then made roving out of the batts and spun them up.  I plied the yarn onto itself.

Spring colors everywhere.....

I started dyeing wool (merino, BFL, and polwarth) tencel, firestar and some alpaca yesterday when I came home from work.  It has now finished drying in the awesome Florida sun.  The colors remind me of Easter egg dyeing.  I want to make some fluffy spring batts and now I have some pretty spring colors to add to them.  Also last weekend I ended up buying approx. 3 lbs. of Alpaca fleece at a wonderful local farm.  I am almost finished picking it, and am going to spin it up.  I bought gray, white, a deep chocolate brown, and a wonderful carmel brown color.  I REALLY like the softness of this new to me fiber.  I was given a few predrafts of it last weekend to try spinning, I loved working with it and need to get the rest done so I can finish filling the spool.  Thanks for reading!
Kelly

I feel like a Smurf!

I just finished dyeing a few pounds of wool.  While I was immersing the wool into the royal blue dye, I accidentally pushed the edge of my glove into the dye and yes, as you have probably guessed, I filled my glove up with blue dye!  But the results were worth it-the colors are yummy!  I also dyed some green tonight- about 1 lb.  I had a bag of scraps and bits of roving that I had been using for flowers and small objects.  I decided to throw the whole lot ( approx. 6 oz.) into the green dye too.  I love the result of the variegated greens I ended up with.  Even the hot pink over dyed into a pretty mossy green!  I needed a variety of greens for a panel I am working on and this gave me a huge variety of shades to work with......not too bad for scraps! Too late to dry tonight so I will post those pictures tomorrow.

My results...

Hopefully when I come back from vacation, I will be able to work on the projects I have planned for all of this fiber!!!  I purposefully left it with a tie dye look.  I cannot wait to see how the silk hankies and caps work with my ideas-the colors are really soft and I was happy with how well the dye set when I was rinsing...the water was almost completely clear.

My results so far..

Okay so I switched the dye source.  I was going to do koolaide but was not happy with the color choices.  So I did some more research and found information on using Wilton icing dyes. 

Soaked  wool in cool water and vinegar before dyeing

Water and Dye (use a tablespoon of dye)

Wrap in plastic wrap and nuke for 2 minutes

Drying

Now off to dye the silk...... :)

Update:  The silk took the dye and left me with rich deep colors!  It does have a tie dyed effect in some areas, but I really, really like the outcome.