Feels like I have been dyeing everything in sight the last couple of days :)
This is just todays dyeing... Norwegian wool tops & silk chiffon |
I had a big wool order a couple of weeks ago, all undyed. So last week I brought an Ashford chemical dye set - 12 colour pots, each one will dye a kilo to full strength.
Yesterday and today have been my first 'go' with them - today I even found a second dyepot so I could get more done. I have 2 kg of Norwegian tops and wanted quite a few strong colours, so I decided to dye up 100g of each colour.. decided not to bother yet with black & brown. They are all strong, clear colours and I think I should manage to get quite a few shades by mixing, and making weaker dyepots too. The only thing I have struggled with is my darned scales! They are playing up and not reliably measuring the tiny quantities I needed. Ashford dont give a teaspoon guide like some of the other dyes I have had (i.e. 1/2 tsp = 5g or whatever). So I resorted to guessing & then weighing the pot to see how much it had gone down. Turns out I'm a pretty good guesser :)
So now I've done 1100g of my Norwegian tops (they look like a super bright rainbow) and 4 meters of silk chiffon, in scarf length pieces. I must admit I'm not keen on the smell though - glad I have finished for now!
I've just had a big order of sari silk fibres & silk scraps for my Folksy shop. I quite enjoyed getting them sorted, weighed and packed over the weekend - Monday I got them into my shop. its nice seeing them all in there, they look pretty :)
Unfortunately the photo doesnt do justice, they looked so bright and pretty all lined up like this |
I have also had my carder and spinning wheel out to play! Carded up this batt with lots of banana silk fibre in it so I could take an example photo for the listing..
| Sunrise? or sunset? cant quite decide which it reminds me of most.. |
ANd now I'm spinning it in bits and dabs, whenever I get 5 minutes of quiet time I spin a little more..
And now another week is almost over... another weekend nearly here - where does the time go?!
xx