An experiment with Wilton's black and vinegar

I recently dyed some wool mill ends and wanted to try and experiment with Wilton's black and see what results I would get. A friend of mine had recently played with it and used a different method then I had originally used when I first tried Wilton's so I wanted to try and compare the two methods with the black to see what I would get. She had loosely followed PieKnits method while I had loosely followed the one found in this blog.

I really didn't find much of a difference between using the microwave and the stove but I did find a difference between presoaking the fiber with vinegar and not.

In the above photo the two on the left were done in the microwave and the ones on the right on the stove. For the ones on the stove I followed the directions in the blog exactly for both with the only difference being that I presoaked the one on the far right with vinegar. The dye exhausted for both and yet the one that was not presoaked came out very light like a pastel and with very little green.

Here's another shot I got outside which may give a better idea of the results. I should have kept them in the same order but I obviously didn't think it through. In this shot the two center braids were dyed using the microwave. I started off following the directions exactly with the only difference between whether they were presoaked or not but ran into a problem when the one that was not presoaked in vinegar didn't exhaust the dye. In fact it looked like it had hardly taken any of the dye at all even after I let it sit all night. I ended up adding a glug of vinegar to the mix and redoing the microwave in order to get the dye to exhaust. I would say it ended up similar in tone tone to the other one but for some reason has a lot more greens.

Overall the one presoaked in vinegar and dyed on the stove seemed the darkest and I actually found stove dyeing to be much easier than the microwave method. I had planned on doing something similar with Wilton's royal blue but ran out of time and ended up just throwing the fibers together in the pot.


The funny part is here the fibers not presoaked with vinegar came out a deeper tone. I'm thinking about overdyeing the fibers on the left to see if I can get a similar blue as the one on the right.

I'm also thinking about overdyeing the blacks as well with more black to see if I can get a little bit darker and to take out the pastel bits.

I had a lot of fun doing this and want to pick up a lot more colors to play with. I tried handpainting yesterday and will need to write up and post the results for that as well. Though I've already uploaded the pics to my Flickr account if you want a peek.

Clicked publish now a little too soon.

I'm such a space cadet I forgot to include more of my spinning I had wanted to share. I swear spinning is becoming like an addiction for me. I find it a great way to de-stress. I'll probably end up with more than I could possibly use but I'm sure I'll find a way to fix that.

I had some older roving that I had picked up way back when I first got a drop spindle. I had about half of it left from when I gave up in frustration on the spindle. Funny now that I've gotten it on the wheel I think I may try the spindle again some time. I think it was easier to learn on the wheel then the spindle. Anyways, this is the result of spinning that roving, I'm not sure what kind of wool it was just that it was wool and it spun pretty nicely. I was sad to come to end of it.










I also had some more fiber, again not sure what kind of wool just that it is wool. (I really should have marked these) Its a bit rougher and has these cool silvery grey streaks through it, I think this was picked up at OFFF last year. This has been even easier to spin a finer strand but I also got quite a few slubs in there from when I screwed up. Its a little more of a faded blue than it shows in the picture.










I'm thinking that once I'm done with the blue I may ply it with the beige as I think they might be a nice combo, still debating it though. The blue in this picture is a little closer to the true color.

More spinning goodness.

I realized I never mentioned that I did end up purchasing the rose. I really enjoy spinning with it and I also just love the way it looks.

I picked up a drying rack from Ikea since its dangerous to leave drying wool in the bathroom since they usually are not dry by the time my son needs the shower. I took advantage of the new rack to finally properly set my hand spun and I was surprised at how it really made a difference in how it looks and hangs.

After seeing how others take pictures of their hand spun I also took another shot with a penny to give a better idea of thickness.

Bad Blogger! No Biscuit!

So I've been horribly bad about blogging. You may have noticed multiple posts appeared all in one day. I also have a livejournal that is more for personal blogging and keeping in touch with some friends that live out of state. I posted a few crafty things over there that I realized really should have been on here and that I really needed to get active back on this blog so I decided to move those posts over here.

The migraines are not really back under control. I have awesome weeks and I have weeks where I don't leave the house and I have weeks that are a mix of the two. I realized though that the migraines were making me into a hermit and that I need to get out more when I can. So I'd like to start attending a knitting group when I have good days but it looks like the westside group from ravelry doesn't meet anymore. If anyone knows of any other groups meeting close by please feel free to pass the info along, bonus points if they meet during the day since nights are harder for me.

You spin me right round...

I've been spinning like a mad woman. I have some ugly practice runs but I just plied my first batch of yarn (not counting the small one I did in class) and I'm in love.



There is just something that is so relaxing about spinning. I love watching the colors spin up especially when plying. I can't wait to try dyeing some of my own roving and spinning that up. I had picked up some black Wilton's dye because of the interesting results a friend of mine got and I'm thinking I need to dye some of that up this weekend to spin. I may do a separate batch of roving similar to this one (minus the black strip) and then spin both of them up and ply them together.
I have my second class tonight and I can't wait to see what else the teacher will be showing us.

In other news I've been working on the craft room again. It seems like I'm always cleaning and organizing the craft room but its because I never really finish it. I also just need to work on parting with stuff that I think I might use and yet I haven't used them in ages. I have a few bins of clothes I just need to goodwill or freecycle. The biggest problem is I have more stuff then I have space for and it quickly overwhelms the craft room. I just have too many interests and I really need to either narrow them down or just find a better way to keep them organized.

Spring Cleaning

I got a wild hair and decided that I was tired of all the books we have on our bookshelves that we don't read especially since we don't have room for other books that we do read and pulled all the books that we don't use. I managed to fill seven of our cloth grocery bags and sell 2.5 of them to Powell's. Of course I turned around and bought more books. I picked up A Treasury of Knitting Patterns and Knitting from the Top. I'd like to try and come up with some of my own knitting patterns. Unfortunately I am a very very slot knitter so we'll see how that goes. Of course now I have a little under 5 bags of books and I'm not sure what to do with them. I may try and take them to Jan's Paperbacks and sell them there with the rest either freecycled or taken to Goodwill. Some should probably be just thrown away as they were well read but I'd hate to toss a book that someone may get enjoyment out of reading.

Fiberlicious!

So I took the first part of my spinning class on this weekend and actually managed to make some yarn. Its thick, a little wonky and a very small amount but I've been trying to teach myself for a couple months now with no luck so I'm happy just to have gotten this far. The teacher was very cool, very knowledgeable and had some kick ass examples that were quite inspiring. She also showed me why I was having so much difficulty. I hadn't realized I needed to adjust the tension if the fiber wasn't winding on the bobbin, I was getting so frustrated because it would seem to over twist and never get on the bobbin properly when all I need to do was make a small adjustment to the tension and zoom there it went!



As part of my "homework" we need to spin 20 minutes a day and then make something out of what we spin. So here's what I currently have for my homework. Its still on the bobbin and hasn't been plied or set yet.



I want to see if I can get the yarn a little thinner though this already much thinner than my first effort. I have no clue what I'll make out of it especially since I'm not sure how much yardage I'll have in the end.