Monday, January 07, 2008

My First Handspun

Here I am finally posting the pics. I believe I finished this on New Years day.

Here's the plied yarn on my swift. I don't have a niddy noddy (honey if you are reading this Hint HINT) so I used the swift and measured around. I ended up with about 93 yards.

on swift

Not a great close up but you get the idea.
upclose

Here are my weapons of dying...my crock pot, food dyes in straight red, red with a touch of black, and red with a touch of purple, and the instructions found here.
crock and dyes

Here's the dye pour. I put on the cover and walked away and wrestled with the computer for several hours...
Yarn and dye


When its done it looks like this. I actually added dye several times to get a deeper red. It was still in the pot when my Love came home and asked if I knew there was yarn in the crock pot. *sigh* boys.
dye exhausted

Here it is. My first hand spun. I'm very proud of it. There are a few wonky spots. I liked doing the singles on the drop spindle but the plying really killed my hands. I couldn't knit for a few days. This experience really is pushing me to seriously take steps to getting my own wheel. I'm addicted to the dying too. I keep thinking of color combinations. I may try some acid dyes but I'll do those in the shop at work.


My First Handspun

So there it is...and tonight it will become something else.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey, if you're interested in a 'for dyeing only' crockpot, I have 2 that I'm getting rid of. One only works on low; one only works on high. Let me know if you want one (or both) of them. The handspun looks awesome!

Karen said...

It's truly beautiful! And *much* nicer than my first handspun!

Lisa said...

Beautiful.

All my friends are married spinsters. What's that about?

Anonymous said...

P- you did this on your hand spindle! WOW I'm impressed. Did you ply on it too?

kzcac

Ms. Rachel said...

I figured you for the natural dyes. I can see you over a boiling cauldron working with saffron and turmeric looking for the perfect gold.

Check out this site:
http://www.pioneerthinking.com/naturaldyes.html

I also came across this site when looking at some new sites I thought you would like it.

http://www.joyofhandspinning.com/natural-dyes.shtml