In the Pink

I picked through my boxes of wool tops this morning looking for some pink. Here's what I found.

I'm spinning it up to ply with my bonus bag of pink merino blend. It will be interesting to see how the different colour combinations turn out.

Another Colour Capture

I finished spinning the sea green colours for my friend M last night. Now I just have to do the plying. I ended up mixing a variety of green-blue tops for the second single, rather than using the dark purple I'd chosen originally.

Here's the purple wool top--on the right--with some dyed silk. I'm thinking this is a better combination.I didn't want the contrast with the purple to distract from the subtle variations in the greens. . . . Note to self: take a photo of the green skein when it's done, before you hand it over.

Colour Capture

I've just spent a frustrating five minutes trying to capture the colour of these wool tops with my camera. I picked them up at the Guild last weekend. Well, actually my friend M picked them up and paid for them and I offered to spin them up for her. I'm trying to keep them out of the general stash, so there's a better chance of my getting to the spinning sooner rather than later. There's a dark purple to go with the sea-greens, but I'm not quite sure how to make the most of the combination. I started pulling colours out of my collection, which has its own excitement, but may not result in any spinning happening anytime soon.

This coming Sunday is the first in the month--October already!--and I'll be at the Guild for a few hours of easy spinning and conversation. That seems an ideal opportunity to get on with this project. Maybe I can complete it before it officially gets on to the to do list. It's fun to trick myself that way occasionally.

That's Yellow

Yesterday was a rinsing day. Most of my dyeing from Saturday is still either on the line or in the sink, but this bit of wool top is all ready to go.Now that's what I call yellow! I'm thoroughly convinced that tumeric is a very effective natural dye. Yes, it does still smell a bit like curry. I'm told that a bit of fabric conditioner in the final rinse might help.

Yummy Yarn

I dropped in to the Yarn Barn a couple of days ago. I wanted to see what cellulose fibres they might have. I'm teaching a Procion Dyeing workshop at the Guild next weekend. We'll do most of our samples with cotton, but a bit of variety is always fun. Here's what I came home with: The two balls of yarn at the front of the pic are cellulose--natural coloured cotton on the left and viscose-rayon on the right. As for the rest, well . . .

• 200g of undyed wool tops, because I didn't have any left, which is pretty much as bad as not having any chocolate in the house!
• a cone of wool-acrylic blend, because it was on the clearance shelf and its warm glow was irresistable. I can tell you many ways that I might use it--and probably will--but the truth is that it talked to me and I had to bring it home.

My plan is to dye some cotton samples today. I managed to clear at least half of my big table yesterday. A bit more effort this morning should see it usable. Today and tomorrow my calendar is quite open. Sunday's a busy day, but then there's a bit of space early next week. That should give me enough time to do the tedious rinsing that goes with procion dyeing and still have time to enjoy my colours and put things in order ready for next weekend. As I say, that's the plan. Now to execute it I need to start by sorting out the kitchen.

Thoughts of Chocolate

Ummmm, yum! A blend of wool tops: "dark chocolate" and "nutmeg" from First Editions, spun together with just sprinkling of white. A friend who saw this skein sitting on my table while we were having coffee this morning suggested lamingtons--now that's nice and Australian!