Fiber Monday - When everything comes out even
I'm just about done with my dyeing experiment of dyeing 100 grams of fleece with each of the twelve dye colors I have (eleven actually because I wasn't planning on black). You want to hear something that filled me with great satisfaction? When I got down to measuring out the fleece for the last two colors, I realized that I had exactly enough fleece for it all to come out perfectly even. Here is everything minus the two that are still drying.
What is missing is brown and emerald. These last two colors were interesting because the dyes each broke quite a bit. (Broke meaning that they separated into their component parts when I started heating the dye pot.) This also means these colors are the least uniform of everything. I will be curious to see what they end up looking like when I spin them. Here's brown:
As you can see the black used to make it separated quite a bit which is why you see black patches. And emerald:
All total this is nearly two and half pounds of fiber. The next step is to card it all. I decided to go with carding because there is usually a little less waste that way and I'd really like as close to the 100 grams of each color as I can get. This is going to take a while.
On to knitting. Here is how far I am with the sock.
I have just under an inch left to knit before I get to the heel. But here is how much yarn I have left for this sock.
This is not enough yarn to finish the sock. I'm hoping it is enough yarn to get to the heel. I'm pretty much playing yarn chicken at this point. I don't know what I did with my measuring with the yarn, but I clearly did something wrong. In order to be able to finish the socks I needed more yarn. I checked in my stash and I didn't have any fingering weight yarn that would work, so I had to go to the yarn store. It's a hard life but someone has to do it. Here is what I found.
I think this yarn will be the foot of the socks. I would love it if I had enough hand spun to also do the toe, but we'll have to wait and see about that. I'm also hoping I have enough of the grey hand spun to do the heel, but once again, I'm not entire sure.
Finally, I'm back to weaving. I fixed the threading error which was hanging me up. It was an incredibly simple error to correct and it has made weaving this warp infinitely easier. I should have just fixed the error right away. There is probably a life lesson in there somewhere. I have enough warp for two, maybe three more dish towels. This one I've actually finished and I really like how it ended up. This is what it looked like at the beginning.
And here is the dish towel I began this afternoon.
I love watching the designs emerge and seeing how different the colors of the warp end up depending on the color of the weft. I'll spare you my moanings about the limitations of this loom because clearly I can still weave cool stuff with it.
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