hand dyed | Little Miss Drama Pants

July 30, 2010
by lilMDP 5 Comments

Sidetracked

I really intended to just work on my shawl this week and finish the edging. Really. I want to finish this shawl so I can wear it (when it gets cooler and less humid) and so I can brag on how it only took me 2 years to finish. OK. So I can just brag that I finished it and we won’t mention that it took me 2 years. But whatever.

Anyway, the point is that I just hit a wall and couldn’t knit on it anymore. I was chomping at the bit to start any other project so long as it didn’t involve lace weight yarn and beads. Lots and lots of shiny beads. Ooh! SHINY!

Digressing!

Awhile back I dyed some mill end roving I got from Sheep Shed Studio.

This was not one of my better attempts as the roving got slightly felted. One very important lesson I learned from this dye attempt is that you CANNOT rush the process. Especially the part where you let the roving cool down on it’s own and don’t “help” it by immersing it in cold water. That’s what causes the felting.

But despite being ever so slightly felted, I really liked the way the colors turned out. I let them dry on their own (to not felt them anymore than they already were), petted them a bit, braided them up and then stuck them in my roving cabinet. And essentially forgot about them for awhile.

But then yesterday, because I was going a little crazy from knitting the same thing over and over and over and over and over, I decided that I needed to do something else completely different. Anything different. But I was feeling a little guilty about abandoning the shawl until my good friend Elizabeth reminded me that if you spin to get away from the knitting, it’s not cheating. Because, hello! It’s spinning, not knitting. I immediately felt better about my need to be sidetracked with a diversion. That’s right! It’s a diversion!

Mmmm....Diversion! Sidetrackery!

It’d been a ridiculously long time since I’d playing with roving and my spinning wheel. Like an embarrassingly long time. So this was an excellent diversion. And while we got off to a little bit of a rough start, it ended up being a lot like riding a bike. Once you get back into the rhythm of it all, piece of cake. Mostly.

I actually dyed two different colorways and then spun them both up together. The blue/green colorway is really easy to see, but the other is roving that I “spot” dyed with blue/green/purple and is so much more subtle when it spins up. The spots sort of bled together a bit, but I really like how it turned out. Here it is in its unspun glory.

I spun my little spinny heart out yesterday and loved every moment of it. I even stopped to take the time to draft my roving before I spun it. Mostly because, you know, I had to. You know, to unfelt the roving. I think I actually might start taking more time to draft my roving before I spin. On the whole, I seem to get more consistent yarn when I do that. Not always, but mostly. Anyway! I had about 7 small braids and did my best to spin it all up on one bobbin. I got all but a very little bit of the last braid on the bobbin. And then I Navajo plied it all.

104 yards of Nummy Yarn

I’m mighty pleased with the way it all turned out. Now I just need to set it and knit it up. I’m thinking cute, short fingerless mitts.

Squee!

And now? Now I feel like I can get back to my shawl without begrudging it. Mostly. Maybe right after I spun up some more of my stash…

September 22, 2008
by lilMDP 4 Comments

More to Follow

I waited until about 7 pm last night to start dyeing. (I was a good girl first and did more housework than I care to admit before I started on the dyeing.) I mixed up some more dye, mixing colors to create new shades and then got to work. Last night I decided to dye alpaca. I had some beige/brown and some grey/black alpaca. Or alpaca/merino blend. I can’t remember now since it’s from last year.

Anyway, at SAFF I took a dye class with Phylleri Ball (who is AWESOME) of Steam Valley Fiber Farm and she showed us some rovings and yarn that were naturally colored and then dyed. It made for gorgeous and I wanted to give it a try.

Letting the roving rest while the pot was working on creating some steam. I didn’t even think about taking pictures while I was dyeing the roving, but that’s mostly because I don’t have a tripod. B is good at many things, but photography is not one of them.

A watched pot will not boil, but it will produce a lot of steam. Good thing that’s all I needed. This is my thrift store find. I paid less than $8 for the pot and the “strainer.” Score!

Steam, baby, steam! Twenty minute steam bath and then into another colander to sit in the sink while they cool down before rinsing the excess dye out of the roving.Pictures of the roving will come once its dry.

So up until last night, all my dye supplies were just clumped together on the dining room table. I finally changed that and used two different plastic containers to consolidate it all into one place. I’m pretty pleased with my ingenuity, if I do say so myself. (Click to make bigger.)

This got me to wondering about other dyers’ stash. How do you store your dye paraphernalia?

September 12, 2008
by lilMDP 3 Comments

My Life Comes Down to This Now

There’s been quite a few things happening around Chez Pants, but I was waiting for the debut of the brand new blog (well, ish) before I strated blogging about it all, so this is going to be an uber long post. You might want to grab a beverage before we get started. I’ll wait.

Are you back with fortifications? Excellent.

First, I’m going to have do that soccer parent thing and show you pictures from the first game of the season. It’s a milestone year for us because they’re actually keeping score this year and they really smart uniforms with endorsements on them. Or advertising. Same difference, right? Anyway, here are pictures from the first game:

There’s also been quite a lot of dying and spinning going on as well. The Boy and I died up some yarn (His is the blue colorway) that I had spun way back in the beginning days.

[SIDENOTE] So I just went to go pick up the Boy from car pool and I convinced him (rather easily, truth be told) that he should model some roving and yarn for me.

Him: When you put the picture of my yarn, will put my name under it and underline my name?
Me: I don’t use your name on my blog.
Him: Then what do you call me?
Me: The Boy.
Him: I don’t like that name.
Me: You don’t?
Him: No. I want to be the BAD Boy.
Me: (laughing) OK.
Him: Will you put this on your blog? And tell them I want to be the BAD Boy?
Me: Absolutely.

So there you have it. [/END SIDENOTE]

He modeled the roving for me, but then it got hot so he went inside.

the colors are really close

This is some 100% wool I dyed up. These colors seem to be my calling card, because I am always drawn to them in yarn and roving. And also when I dye. That’s just under 6 ounces of roving being modeled by the BAD Boy.

Here’s what became of the roving that Emily sent me:

432 yards of squishy yarn

And this is the yarn that the BAD Boy and I dyed. His is the blue colorway.

And I think we’ll stop at that. I’ve got yarn that I bought on sale to show you, but we’ll save that for another day.

September 4, 2008
by lilMDP 3 Comments

Sneak Peek

I did some dyeing over the weekend. The Boy even got in on the action and dyed up some handspun I had. I’ll have more pictures soon.

May 20, 2008
by lilMDP 6 Comments

Dry Is Better

When this roving was drying, it looked awfully muddy and while I was disappointed, I knew I could overdye it. But now that it’s dry? I love it. The colors aren’t muddy, but they are muted in some places and still bright in others. And maybe it’s not quite as tye dyed looking either. I still wonder about the latent hippie tendencies, though.

Anyway, any suggestions on what to call this colorway?

December 3, 2007
by lilMDP 1 Comment

Dye Love

Elizabeth and I finally got together after months, and I do mean months, of trying to coordinate our calendars. I spent pretty much all day over at her house having a really fantastic time. We talked and knit and spun and dyed and ate. We dyed up some roving. Some turned out really well, and some did not. There will be some redying happening sometime in my future. I can feel it.

As for what turned out well?

The reds are fairly accurate, but the blues and greens are actually a big darker.

The proper color of the roving is actually somewhere between these two pictures. That’s not maddening, is it?

Some other things I did/discovered while hanging out with Elizabeth:

I need hand carders.
I got a lot of knitting done on the hat.
Elizabeth can rock the tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich lunch.
I should never try to give my husband a specific time as to when I will be home when I am doing something fiber-related. Otherwise, I make a liar out of myself.

Little Miss Drama Pants

a hot asiany mess

Tag Archives: hand dyed