Dyed Samplers

Yesterday, I spent an enjoyable morning showing my friend Maple (who raises Alpacas) the basic of using Acid dyes on fiber. We focused on Maple's fiber, but I got a few samples in, too, of course!

First, though, I had to show this snapshot - the yield of a recent dye pot ... there was a pound of Border Leicester lamb curls that I had fun dyeing in a wide variety of colors, and carding into spinning batts as accents, bright jeweled bits of color! This is all that was left...Rose, Peach and Spruce. They are now on their way to a new fiber home.



Below is Old Poppies, because the intense and bright colors remind me of the common field poppies that grow in many gardens - scarlet, orangey-red, the deep purpley black and even yellow gold.



This next lot, Highlands Grass, didn't want to photograph well, the colors are dark...teal, spruce, a burgundy raspberry and marine blue. I had some white areas left in this roving that give it an amature look. They actually are very subtle raspberry pink and don't look as stark in the actual roving as they do in the photograph below



And then, just to exhaust the Marine blue dyepot I threw in some of my bulky grey yarn and got this intense color (of course I wish I had dyed more!)



Now I have the strong urge to dye more fibers, but where to find the time? Incidentally, the roving I used in the above samples are from a fiber blend I just got back from Zeilingers...a mix of Finn-Cheviot, Border Leicester, Lincoln lamb, some Corriedale and maybe even Romney. I thought it would make a nice strong sock yarn (wish I would have added some mohair that I had on hand!). Though I haven't had time to sample it for socks, it did seem to take the dyes brilliantly. When I spin these samples up, I will post a photo of the resulting yarns.

The yarn is some of my bulky Corriedale yarn, available for purchase (and on sale now!) from our farm website Serenity Farms