I made yarn

Evening 1 - One bobbin filled.

Evening 2 - Second bobbin filled and the two plied.

End result = 108 yards of worsted / aran bulky weight from 100g of beautiful Merino roving in the Candy colourway from Unwind. Two hundred g to go.

I thought I'd have some trouble spinning anything but really fine singles, but it went not too badly. And so much quicker! If I failed to make bigger singles, I had a secret back-up plan to use more plies to get to worsted weight. That seemed like a bit of a cop-out, though, so I tried my darnedest to spin something bigger as consistently as I could. Turns out my consistency at that weight could use some practice! I could also use some practice at getting in between bulky and superfine weights....

Chocopoo Brown

After sitting in the pot cooling down, the yarn did indeed take up the rest of the colour. I had complete dye exhaustion, and I was fairly exhausted myself. Note to self: save dyeing for a day when you haven't also worked 8 hours in an office.

Here's the yarn after cooling and washing - note how it's not felted:

I was extremely hopeful because it looked like it would dry to a really rich, solid brown. And it did! If you click the picture you'll get a bigger version, in case you want to see all the chocopoo loveliness up close.

Now I just have to dye another 1000g of yarn and then get knitting. Hubby approves so it's all systems GO. He might even get that sweater in time for winter!

I have 4oz of merino/nylon roving I could dye as well, and about a pound of corriedale roving, and another pound of bfl roving ... I'm going to have so much fun!

The 100g Test

It's not done yet, but the first test of the lucky number 6 has commenced. I was rooting for number 6, but my daughter came home and proclaimed number 3 her favourite. Hubby voted number 6 with no hints or advice from me, so we have more in common than a child.

As I mentioned previously, I had to have 133mL of dyestock for 100g of yarn to get 2% depth of shade. What that worked out to, with the 1-1-4-4 ratio of number 6 was:

13.3mL red
13.3mL yellow
53.2mL blue
53.2mL brown

It was a dark and stormy pot....

But 20 minutes in, it was looking just a wee bit on the gray / green side. I could see from the water left in the pot that there was still a fair bit of red to go. I guess some colours 'take' faster than others.

After an hour on the simmer, I had only a bit of colour left in the water. It's sitting in the pot cooling down slowly now (we don't want felt), so it'll probably take up the rest of that colour while it sits. Ideally, we want clear water at the end. Look in the pot, though - it's still very dark. That's the yarn! 

Once I've taken the yarn out, given it a rinse and got it dried, I'll post another picture. The wet results in the pot right now look like we have indeed achieved the perfect chocopoo brown, but that really remains to be seen.

Until then!

Solar dyeing

At yarn camp, we were given a jar of natural dye with yarn in it and told to leave it in a sunny place for at least a month. Today was the one-month mark, so this is my grand unveiling:

Also, I scoured my brown samples and I think the colours are a little more discernible now. This is the original one, followed by the new one:

Or not. They kind of look exactly the same. Oh well. The 100g brown dye test is on this weekend - stay tuned!

Samples done

First I got out all my gear. In the Becel container I have my yarn soaking in Synthrapol to scour it and get it ready for dye.

I have four little eyedroppers that have .25, .5. .75 and 1.0mL markings - that came in very handy. One for each colour meant no mix-ups.

I got an extra plastic cup and started mixing up my yellow, blue, red and brown. Here are all the ratios I used:

Looking at the wet yarn in its wee plastic-wrapped package, I could tell that the yellow had a lot of power. I did several tests without it and I think the one that I (and the wearer of the garment to be knit with said dyed yarn) choose will be one of the non-yellow ones. They turned out more golden brown and that's not a look my manly man is likely to like.

I had to keep the packages numbered to match the notes. Once they're dry, I'll staple them into the book so that the yarn goes with the record.

You can see the strong yellow in some, a more reddy nature to others, and the ones that are the deepest browns seem to be the ones with the most blue.

Now, here's the thing: I didn't measure the amount of dye to the weight of fibre because they were six-inch pieces of yarn and I didn't want to go there. So once we pick the winner, I'll do a proper test of that  one using the right amount of dye for the weight of fibre, and see what colour I actually get. I may need to up it from my expected 2% in order to get it closer to the sample, but I can do that, so I'm not too worried. More testing is required, though.

Eventually a sweater will be born.