Kiss My Knits!

A couple of nights ago I dyed some wool, with an eye toward having it for my trip. I’m pleased with the results.

This is the first one I did. It came out paler than I expected, but I still like the way it looks. I was going to for something with a lot of white, so it’s not jarring. I don’t have a scale, but the guys at the post office are always amazed that I can estimate the weight of my Jayne hat boxes to the tenth of an ounce, so I’m going to estimate this at right around four ounces. In the closeup, you can see some felting and fuzzing around the edges. I believe this is because I mashed it down in the water when I was soaking it, and because I pushed the dye around too much during cold-painting. I set the dye with the “Saran-wrapped fiber sausage in a steamer on the stovetop” method.


The next morning, I decided to use up the remainder of the dye I had already laced with vinegar. I added more dye to beef up the saturation and also more black to mute the colors a bit. As you can no doubt tell, I’m a big fan of blue. I wanted a variety of complementary tones within the same family, and again, I wanted some white showing. I think (hope) this’ll make an interesteing variegation in the final spun product.

The blue wool isn’t as fuzzed and felted, since I learned from the previous day’s experience and handled it more gently. There’s still room for improvement in my handling procedures. Also, my daughter took the braids and put them over her head, Princess Leia-style, while she pranced around the house which didn’t do them any favors.

I’m really pleased with how these turned out for my first outing into dyeing unspun wool. I’ve got more white wool, so I’ve got more room to experiment. This was very satisfying, and I definitely want to do it again.

I’m always open to criticism or comment – I like learning and feedback!