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rainbow hand dyed yarn
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| a rainbow |
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| and… of course… another rainbow |
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Inspired by all the heathery knits out there this year, we rolled up our sleeves and went to work. We dyed part of Boy George’s lamb locks different shades of purple, periwinkle and lilac, gently teased the locks apart, combined it with some of his natural locks and a little mohair. A couple passes through the carder, and here we have it – our interpretation – some lovely Heather Lavender Spinning Batts.
We are trying something just a little bit different with the second group of spinning batts. Along with the batts that are combination of natural and purple lamb locks, we included two batts that are primarily purple and one batt that is natural. They are all 30% mohair. We think this group of batts will spin up into some lovely yarn for a project with some accent color or stripes.
Boy George’s lamb locks (Border Leicester – Coopworth – Wensleydale) are even more soft and lustrous with the addition of the mohair. We are so happy with the end result that we just might have to get back to the carder and spin up some of these for a sample knit!
We began the day by preparing a Marigold Dyebath, breaking up a large amount of dried stems, leaves, and flowers in the dyepot and simmering for an hour.
From this stinky ugly brown concoction, we got some very lovely yellow hanks of yarn
and the next day a more golden/tan color on some locks of wool from our Coopworth cross ram lamb, Goliath.
While the marigolds were beginning their magic, we used our canned hibiscus liquid to begin dyeing another hank. This yarn is still soaking for a couple of days.
We also did some rainbow dyeing of yarn and mixed lamb locks. First, using turquoise, purple and periwinkle.
And then using emerald (brightened with some yellow), pink and turquoise.
Using up our left over emerald, we rainbow dyed some additional locks.
Woo Hoo!! We feel like we accomplished a lot!