Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Winter's coming...

It's not here yet, but the lovely sunny fall days we've been having here in the Front Range have suddenly turned chilly, grey, and damp. Time to dig through the tea stash and find the Lapsang Souchong; it's perfect stuff for a cold, raw day.

Here's the fiber that I'm in the process of preparing. Right now I'm waiting impatiently for it to get dry! I tried combing it on the English combs a few minutes ago, but it fought me trying to draw it off, so it's still too damp to work with that way.

There's a bit of a story to this one, which makes it unfortunately a one-off. I don't think I could reproduce it. The Friday night before the last day of the Weavers' Guild show, I found a bobbin full of plied Merino that had gone astray and ended up under my desk. After discarding the outermost layer of wraps to remove any dust, fur, etc. there were still 4.5 ounces on there--excellent!

My blue skein had sold early on, so I wanted to make more blue, but not the same. So I went for a teal instead, and mixed up Peacock, Robin'sEgg Blue, and a bit of Turquoise in a dyepot, and plopped the skein in there. After it was done to the depth I wanted, there was still dye left in the dyebath. I hate wasting dye, so I dashed downstairs and rummaged around in my fleeces, and found a nice white CVM fleece I'd bought some years ago from WIndyHill Farm. Grabbed a big double handful, ran back upstairs, soaked it for a few minutes in hot soapy water, and then stuck it into the dyepot still on the stove. Ignored it for a half hour or so, and then turned off the heat and let it cool overnight. What you see is what I got.

Now if it would just get dry...

No comments:

Post a Comment