Dye Some More

Turns out it's really hard to get good dye penetration on a full pound of soy silk roving in a crock-pot. It just sucked up whatever I poured on - and poured on and poured on. Still, if it's completely horrible spun up, I know I can always overdye some more...

This is a skein of my sort-of kettle-dyed yarn, which I think is the artistic way of saying I didn't stir it. I couldn't quite photograph the colour accurately: it's really more intense than the picture shows.

I hadn't washed the skeins, as I knew I'd be dyeing them, and I'm delighted with the way they've bloomed. I think the fleece was a border leicester crossed with merino, blended with a bit of silk and some grey kid mohair that my brother picked up for me on his travels somewhere or another. New Zealand possibly, though more likely Australia (since he does live there, after all).

Like most of my yarns, it's a three-ply, but the long and only moderately crimpy staple of the wool, combined with the silk and kid resulted in a fairly dense yarn, almost scratchy even. Not over-twisted, but not a lofty yarn. Good for outerwear.

With the simmering in the dye-pot however, it has bloomed marvellously. The coloured silk and kid lend the yarn a slightly rustic tweediness (even apart from the happily uneven dye-job), but more importantly, the yarn glows. It has fabulous lustre. It's not merino-soft or cashmere-soft, but it does have a luxurious silkiness and drape and even though it doesn't seem much fatter than before dyeing, it seems less dense. 

I don't understand, but I don't care either, as I like it very much.

Below is some merino-bamboo-alpaca (with a hint of glitz) that also spent some time in the dye-pot.

And another yummy blend, no extruded fibre this time.

Oh wait. I think there's a touch of glitz.

Notice a theme, colour-wise? Except for the soy silk, everything I dyed this weekend seems to fall in a narrow slice of the colour wheel. Wonder what it says about my state of mind?

I did quite a bit of knitting too, but it's just More Hexagons which need to be steamed before being made available for public viewing. I've completed three rounds plus three; three rounds plus seven to go, and then of course the edging and finishing and whatnot.

Also did a bit of beading.

The famous white Russian beading book (if you've never heard of it you may not be  beader) has a stitch which leaves the beads in a configuration much like four-sided tubular right angle weave, but with fewer thread passes, and it's way faster. Makes a very slinky rope.

It doesn't look that great with seed beads, but perhaps I haven't happened on the right seed beads. There's something about the proportion of hole size to overall bead size, as well as the height to diameter ratio that affects how well a particular bead will do in this stitch.

Fire-polished beads and rice pearls work verra nicely!