Aren’t you supposed to be dyeing yarn or something?

ahem…yeah. I know I’ve been relatively quiet about the whole business and dyeing thing, but I’m not quite ready for a full-on launch yet. I’m an ex-engineer, and I need to be satisfied that I’m providing a quality product. Which means spending a lot of time figuring out how to do things best, winding off little bits of yarn for light-fastness testing, and experimenting to find that perfect way to tie a skein so that the yarn will never, ever tangle. (Hey, I can dream, right?)

Yes, a year might seem like an insanely long amount of time to spend “working on it”, but I’m going at my own pace and I’m happy. I’ve been learning an amazing amount, and definitely haven’t been idle, I promise! Spending a month or so learning how to spin and getting even new fiber addictions was definitely worthwhile. As was spending a good deal of time buying fleece, skirting fleece, going to fleece shows, and working in the mill. But now, yes, I’m ready to spend a lot of time dyeing! And here is some of the latest. I hope you like it!

Working with natural dyes is definitely a learning experience! Even with a working knowledge of chemistry, 10 or so books, and 3 workshops with different dyers under my belt, it’s still an interesting (and sometimes infuriating) exercise to get the color you want! But what can I say? I really like boiling up wood chips and bugs.

I’m especially proud of the red in the picture above – it took me 3 tries, but I think I have it now. :) I’ve been working with logwood for the past couple of days and am amazed at the range of colors that have come out of that one dyepot. I’m amazed at the strength of that dyepot too, it’s easily about 10x as strong as I thought it would be and I have to be careful to not dye everything black! I’m getting everything from deep purple, to a dark and brilliant blue, to a beautifully intriguing slate. I’ll post some pix of those soon, I promise.