I'm off of work for most of this month and have taken the opportunity to dust off my spinning wheel and get it moving again.
I've probably mentioned before, but spinning with a toddler around presents challenges that will be obvious to anyone with small kids or anyone who has ever been around small children for more than two minutes, for that matter. They are just so curious. My son sees the wheel and says "I'm going to drive it!" He moves his little chair over to it and the wheel is then at a perfect height for him to pretend to drive a boat or car or truck or lawnmower --whatever suits his fancy. While this is nice for Silas and his wonderfully vibrant imagination, his interaction with my wheel can make my head spin faster than the yarn. In a limited way, I have been able to engage him in helping me in the spinning process. I've gotten him to hold the yarn while I'm plying two strands together and he will stand there letting the yarn flow through his hand saying "I'm spinning yarn!" This works while plying, but it's going to be a while until he's able to handle drafting. So, basically, I spin while he's asleep or out of the house with his dad. This limits things, but whatever. You do what you can.
Today, I'm trying my hand at dying by using a crock pot. We had an old crock pot we never used, so I decided to make it my dye pot. I'll know in a few hours how it turned out and will post pics soon. I also dyed wool last fall using coffee and I don't believe I ever posted pictures. I'll be spinning that up soon. Dying wool is pretty new for me, but I'm getting tired of spinning nothing but variations on grey, and I have SO much grey batting. I've gotta do something fun with it!
My knitting speed has slowed while I focus my attentions on spinning, but I have started another project from the book "French Girl Knits." The pattern is Paloma, which is a lace cap-sleeve blouse. While I'm loving the pattern so far, it's been hard to find the time to knit more than a few rounds a day. It's going to be a while before this becomes an fo, that's for sure.
Time to go check my dye pot!
The crock pot dying was a big success! As pictured in these images, the color is fairly true. I used Gaywool dye in Cedar. The outcome was green, but with a blue-gray shimmer. Perhaps the fact that I'm dying light gray wool rather than white adds this element. I've got some white lambs wool to card and then I'll try dying that in order to see how it compares.
Lovely outcome! But my dye lot was so small as I wasn't sure how much wool my small crock pot could handle. It only spun up about 38 yards double plied. Next time, I will dye more wool and increase my lot.
I'm very impressed with this dye and will use it again (quite a lot came in the container). I noticed no noxious odour but still, it is a chemical dye. In the future, I'd like to experiment with natural dyes as much as possible.
