Dyeing...

After the reed blossom natural dye I went for another dye plant that was in my stock for almost two years. I collected these birch leaves on midsummer day in 2013.
Only 30 grams of leaves gave an intense yellow on two 100g skeins of DK yarn.

The yarn was mordanted first with alum, while the leaves were allowed to boil a bit for dye extraction.
Then I poured the mordanting water into the dye bath and hung only a section of each skein into the simmering "birch leave tea". After a little while, I added more of the skein and more and more... In the end I put the whole skeins into the bath and let it cool over night.
Then the skeins were removed and washed.
Into this almost exhausted dye bath I gave a spoon full of alum, heated and let a part of a skein of sock yarn hang into it, heated it up for a short time and then let it stand for a day (at room temperature). It also got a pretty soft yellow... I'm planning to use that skein for some indigo dyeing.

Apart from plants I was also pretty productive with acid dyes and tried myself at kettle dyeing...
The roving was immersed completely in a pot of water. Different dyes were added in different sections of the pot. The dyes spread a bit and talk to each other.... as a result I got very harmonic colors that fit together so well.

For the following two rovings I only used Ashford hot pink, blue and yellow (no black or other colors). So beautiful!

left: BFL wool, right: Merino 16 mic

And as I am showing dyed stuff already.... the following was dyed already some months ago, but I never showed them. Pure Tussah silk and merino/silk blends. They were dyed using the handpainting method, wrapped in foil and steamed to fix the dyes.

When am I going to spin all that??!!

Fiber Club October 2014

This month I received my first fiber club from Sidi's.

The name of the colorway is "Autumn Leaves" and this describes it perfectly:

50% Polwarth / 50% Tussah Silk

(dyed by the wonderful Swiss handdyer Sidi)

She dyed the roving in a "palindromic" sequence, from golden yellow over orange to red and back.

So I have spun the roving from one end to the other into a fine single to then ply both ends of the single together out of a ball. I thought this should keep the gradient a bit (because of the symmetrical dyeing), but not too much, to give a little bit of the "barber-pole" effect.

plying ball: one piece of single comes from outside, one from inside the cake

Here's how it turned out - 106 grams, 373 meters (Yippie! Fingering weight was my goal!)
Super soft and shiny thanks to the 50% of silk.

I'm already so curious what the colors of the next month will be!