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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

I'd dye happily

First, let me tell you all that my dissertation is DONE! c'est fini. la finito. Thank you for your *ehem* gentle encouragement, I'm just so happy that it's out of the way. Well I have another presentation in 2 days, but this uni thing is really just never ending. Well, there's one thing I didn't share here. Other than knitting and spinning while I should've been writing, I've also been dyeing.
First I dyed some yarn.
Hand-dyed yarn
It turns out quite blotchy, guess I need more practice. The dye I'm using is Sugarflair food dye, the colours are nice and vivid and sticks to the fibre easily.
Then I tried dyeing some fibres, this one is BFL.
hand-dyed BFL
I didn't put enough dye and ended up with a lot of white spaces, but it looks quite nice spun up.
Hand-dyed, hand-spun BFL
I navajo-plied it to a bulky weight, but it's still quite inconsistent, I'm just not used to spinning thick. My original intention was to knit another Wham-Bam cowl with this, but now I'm worried there won't be enough yardage, so I might just do a normal cowl. It's really soft and squishy though, I'm liking it a lot.
Next I tried dyeing some Corriedale
Hand-dyed Corriedale
Then some brown BFL
Hand-dyed brown BFL
When it was wet I couldn't even tell if the colours are there because it's all so dark, but when it's all dry the colours became so much clearer. I'm liking this one, it's so dramatic.
Dyeing is so much fun even though the whole house did smell of vinegar and burnt hair. Thankfully my housemates didn't complain much. I'm looking forward to dyeing some more since I just bought more colours of the dye, but I'll need to buy GALLONS of vinegar first!
There should be some actual knitting progress next time I blog, really!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ooh that first one is really pretty - like a rainbow! I hear dyeing is lots of fun, I think I'll try it one day.. I just don't have a microwave. :(

My final exam (for the first semester) is tomorrow - I'm totally freaked, relieved and excited at the same time. I just want it over with - new semester starts on Monday. It's true, it just never ends!

alltangledup said...

i love that last one.that muted colours always look good once its
' plied. good luck on the presentation

Linda said...

Well done on getting the work done. The fibre is great, I think you should do more dyeing!