Monday, August 17, 2009

The Rocket Flower Yarn

Tried my hand at low-twist thinninsh single using Greyface 09 fleece.
In some ways, the fleece from hell, not surprising as it came from a crankey little Suffolk cross ewe (who is also a great mother it has to be said). She looks like hell, at first glance her fleece looks like hell - but on further inspection it is fine and soft and I earmarked it for a low-twist single for lace knitting.
Took a while to get the spinning right but it paid off in the end with 1000+ m of 16 wri, 4.4 TPI yarn which dyed nicely with Koolaid.


Hank drying after stove-top drying

The lemon-lime part


Dry, ready to ball-wind


On the ball winder


Shale swatch

Why Rocket Flower? Well, the rocket bolted earlier this year and produced lovely purple/mauve,cream flowers on light green stems.

3 comments:

Irene said...

YO! When is it WE get to try some of your yarn?! I adore the colours in this! Please bring to show off next time!

Janet said...

I am very impressed with your whole process. I am not a fan of Kool Aid but the colour combination you achieved is lovely. Do you have any plans for using other dyes?

Catherine said...

Hi Janet
I'm learning to treat Kool Aid to like any other coloring agent - i.e. mix colors, dilute etc rather than just follow "1 pac/ounce" e.g. in this case, "grape" was mixed with "black cherry", 1/2 the sections dyed with 1/2 pac/oz and one with 3 pac/oz approx.
I also use Landscape dyes.
Thanks for viewing, Catherine