It has been so hot here in the Highlands of Scotland…not America hot but hotter than any other summer I ever remember, especially for the Highlands.
So what did I choose to practice on the hottest day of the year??? Dyeing fibre! Yep a steaming hot pan of fibre and dye on a summers day!
Despite the heat I really enjoyed the process of playing around with some of the dyes. I already had a hot pink but combined with the Opal coloured landscape dye made a lovely purple. This time rather than adding knots I made a crochet chain of fibre and plopped the dyes on randomly…when the dye was almost exhausted in the pan I undid the chain so the white parts could pick up the last traces of the turquoise.
I loved the finished fibre and wondered what it would look like spun.
Meanwhile, I went to my monthly Highland Felters meeting today and discovered they have a drum carder that you can borrow. So when I had finished my initial construction of a Highland Coo picture (more on that when it is finished) I came home and wanted to play with the drum carder. What fibre was literally hanging around? Yep, I took it down from the drying pole and fed it into the drum carder.
The results are these 2 lovely batts (plus some scraps stuck on one of the drums). I will post an update when its spun, but so far I LOVE the colours. I am going to a 3 day music festival on Thursday but for sure I will be playing around with the drum carder at the start of the week.
HighlandHeffalump 
Great read thaankyou
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beautiful! Can I ask you, how big is your dyeing pot please?
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Oh I meant to go in the garage and check for you and forgot and I’m away this weekend from early tomorrow. It’s not a huge pot, but I will hopefully remember to check when I’m back for you.
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no worries! I have an 8L one that I hope will do, but since once I use it, that will be gone from my normal kitchen, I’d rather not pick the “wrong one”. I guess it all depends on how much fibre one wants to put in it, too. Dyeing seems one other deep rabbit hole… 😀
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Yes I have two dedicated dyeing pans although future dyeing will now be in my garage so if I’m to use them again I’ll need a hotplate in there. I have our old microwave but haven’t dyed for a while.
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oh, so TWO pans! Well I guess I’ll start with one and see how it goes. But the microwave too has to be reserved for dyeing only?
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Yes if you are using acid dyes or natural dyes with toxic mordants. I have 2 pans as I did some self striping socks. Made massive loop then dyed half in one pan and the other half in another. There’s a post about it on my blog somewhere.
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ok, great, thanks for the info, I’ll go look for that blog entry, thanks a ton!
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