landscape | Armed with Needles in an Uncertain World

The lovely Sharondoubleknit came around today to not only keep me company but actually GET me dyeing. At one point she asked “exactly how much undyed yarn and fibre do you have?”. Well, the answer now is significantly less than it was this morning!!

The good thing about having us both dye was it was a great opportunity to just play with all the colours i have. We were using Landscape dyes (acid dyes) and I had a lovely kit of ‘mountain’ colours from the elements range (lovely muted colours, only one i hate – an icky greeny yellow called lichen), plus some left over kingfisher (teal!) from a previous project, three primaries and the dye i want to use on some bulky wool for Owls in Bloodwood.

While we were setting up and soaking yarn I organised 4 jars of small amounts of dye with about 5-10g of yarn in each as a test dye. 2 with different dilutions of the bloodwood, one with a teal, one with wombat, a delicious grey/brown and in the end i threw the 5th mini skein in the left over from the more highly diluted bloodwood and a bit of the wombat. Just for fun.

L-R: Kingfisher. Bloodwood 1/2 dilution, Bloodwood full dilution, Bloodwood and Wombat, Wombat

I popped the jars in a pan of water and just popped in on the stove for an hour or so on a lowish heat. It’s a great technique and i’d totally do it again, especially if i wanted to a fairisle pattern and only needed less than 50g of a few colours.

then I started to PLAY! I had a skein of sock yarn, a skein of 8 ply wool and 2 skeins of angora/wool (naturally sensation) 2 bags of undyed roving and some silk caps (still in my collection is the yarn for owls, a large skein of handspun leicester and some silk roving). I wasn’t necessarily going to do it all today, but i ended up doing more than i thought i would!

I played around with mixing the primaries, and Sharon made a rainbow, with the muted colours (even used the yucky lichen and came to really like the wombat!), made a totally ‘jen’ coloured skein of 8ply, mucked around with monochromatic dyeing with different solutions of teal on the angora blend and then used up the last of everything to make a few colours for the last batch of roving. FUN TIMES!

Other than the jar dyeing, I used my new, purpose-bought – rice cooker ($25!) with a steaming pot. It’s perfect. Fill’er up, pop’er on, and leave for 40 minutes! Brilliant!! Sharon dyed in a pot on the stove, which I will be doing for my Owls yarn with the bloodwood.

It was a very fun day with some really interesting results!