I started to draft this ready for my Sunday YOP post, but there’s so much activity I thought it deserves a post of its own.  So here’s what I got up to!

Yesterday I wound some enormous skeins of Bluefaced Leicester (BFL)/Nylon 4 ply to do some self striping yarn.  2 x 50g and 1 x 100g.

My first attempt I only realised after it was in the dye pots that the stripes will knit up white green white green white red white red…doh!  They are muted colours in comparison with last year’s Christmas yarn I dyed.  Also I haven’t left enough white for there to be a full stripe of white on a sock..so still not right.  Doh!

I tried a blue one, but made a mistake so it isn’t self striping. 

It was third time lucky when I dyed a purple one and I’m really happy and hope it knits up nicely.

Next up was a 200g skein of chunky BFL which I dyed in a pot with a burgundy/maroon colour I made mixing a number of different colours together.  Very happy with how this looks.

Once you have the pots out and protection on its hard to stop dyeing.  My next one I thought I was dyeing a merino/bamboo skein but later realised its actually merino/alpaca/nylon 4ply.  To be adventurous I used some of the colours I usually ignore.  This has given a sort of brown, rusty reddish type skein.

I had a small undyed silk scarf that I dyed with hot pink and some purple mixes.  I will later use this to nuno felt (where you felt wool fibres into the silk).

I am borrowing a Guild members mahoosive pot to try to dye up 6 skeins of Aran weight yarn.  I haven’t decided what colour to go for yet…I’m really going to try not to just do purple again….perhaps a deep red…we shall see.  I pick up the pot tomorrow. I have lots of other yarns and fibres that need to be dyed so there may well be another dyeing post later this week!

The dyes I used were mostly Kraftkolour Landscape Dyes, an Ashford dye and some pots from World of Wool. They are all acid dyes.