Pamela's yarn

Warming up slightly outside - well it was -3C this morning when I toddled off to work.

This yarn was bought from the wonderful Pamela - she dyed it her self with natural dyes, including logwood (the purple), madder (the red/orange) and dock leaves (mid brown).   The other pieces are natural sheep colours and still just as fabulous.

There are lots of Ffair Nadoligs (Christmas fairs) on this week-end, so I might pop along to one or two .....

Beanie

The yarn here is Shetland DK dyed with madder and is a lovely orange colour.  I am knitting a beanie in the round and it knits up really quickly.  The crown of the hat is knitted with 4 needles, this is because the stitches are reduced in number and it becomes difficult to manipulate on a set of circular needles.  The intent is to sell the hats and I have also ordered some silver grey DK yarn, which should be arriving in the post next week.  The beanies fit tightly on the head and are snug and warm.

Fun Dye Day

A group of us met with our pots, pans, gas stoves and dye materials to turn our fleece into a selection of beautiful colours.

This yarn colour was achieved by using logwood natural dye on a piece of yarn which had used alum as a mordant.  A delicate lilac.

The darker purple yarn here was from the same dye pot as the delicate lilac, but had been in the pot for about 2 hours longer.

We also used madder, lichen which had been steeping for 8 months (very smelly), brazilwood, heather, indigo and walnuts.  This time the madder produced apricot, which was not the result we had wanted but was pretty enough.