Thursday, 21 July 2011

Another New Project

I'm finally about ready to start the sweater I promised my friend Jen. First I had to get her onto Rav to look at options, and discuss choices and sizing, and whatnot. Yesterday I worked on getting the yarn ready to go. The yarn I have for the project is recycled cashmere yarn, courtesy of Julie's business, Fine Fiber Finds.
She had three skeins of burgundy, and a handful of white ones, so my aim was to dye the white burgundy. I picked up a couple packets of dye (commercial, sorry!) to that end.

I threw all the white skeins in the bathroom sink to soak, and set about making the dye.

Since it's commercial dye, I couldn't really use my spaghetti pot, like I do for food coloring. Or my mixing bowls. Garden buckets? The large one was in use for collecting shower water for my garden, and the cat drinks out of it. So I ended up scrubbing out and using the smaller bucket, and after a while, ended up with a spaghetti-like mass of colored yarn (and slightly pink hands - I did use gloves, but there was a leak issue).

Unfortunately, not as much dye stuck as I would have liked. Possible this may have been because I couldn't simmer the yarn as instructed, since the bucket was plastic. I used hot water, perhaps not hot enough/long enough. Still, the yarn is a nice sort of raspberry color.

And knit in a swatch with the burgundy, it's hopefully not too bad. The fabric texture is good also, so I will go from there.

I had plenty of color left in the bath, it seemed. So I threw in some merino/silk roving, which ended up soaking overnight, as I didn't really want to rinse it last night when I got home from work. That's a slightly redder shade than the yarn, and is currently dripping off in my bathtub, with the fan going to try to remove the extra humidity. Sticky outside and hot, sticky inside, but cooler, a good day to stay in and play with fiber.

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