Experimenting with colour the slow way..............

Wednesday May 1st - so a Woolly Wednesday and a quick update on happenings in Chez Sassy.

Besides spinning at a Model Railway Exhibition for two whole days in the main April has been a month of shawls and experiments.  Four shawls completed and a start made on my St Kida Shawl using the very expensive, but very beautiful Boreray and Soay yarn.

Two Romi's A Mysterious Shawl Kal - one in hand-spun and the other in MCN dyed by me.  The other two are designs from LindaCC - Siberian Iris and Spring Maple, both a delight to knit.

I have been experimenting with blending colours - inspired by Deb Menz's excellent book Color in Spinning which has a section on blending colours on a drum carder.  One of the things that I find really amazing is the way that black can disappear when mixed with other colours

This blend (the photo is lighter than real life) In Space...... consists of more black than the colours, but it is nearly lost once blended.  The proportions are 60grams Black (Merino and Silk) 30grams Amethyst (Merino and Silk) and 5grams of Fuchsia and 5grams of Rainbow Trilobal - so more black.... but where is it?

The second experiment is Solar Dyeing - that is using the heat of the sun to dye yarn in a sealed jar - so free energy.  As the weather forecast suggests that the temperature might actually get above freezing I thought today would be a good day to start the experiment.

First I soaked 100 grams of Merino and mordant the fibre in a solution of Alum 100 mil at 1:10 and Cream of Tartar (11/2 teaspoons).  But my Alum solution had crystallised so first I had to dissolve the crystals!

After allowing the fibre to cool a little I placed the fibre and some of the liquid into a Kilner Jar with 10 daffodil flowers, 20 mixed Peppercorns (Black, Red and Green), 1 Bay Leaf, 2 tiny strands of saffron and 1ml Botanical Colours Natural Dyes - Himalayan Rhubarb.  This last one is a but of a cheat, but at this time of the year there isn't a lot of natural stuff around so as you can see I have raided the spice cupboard.. 

This now gets left in the sun for several months........................ 

Oh, yes I did go to Wonderwool and had a fabulous time - retail therapy a real pick me up after a long winter!

I can sing a rainbow....

Well perhaps not sing, because I am tone deaf and sing flat and completely out of tune - in fact at school I was made to mime the words so I didn't put the other off!!  Is it any wonder that I am such mixed up person?  Although Mr S and I did provide the backing group to Simon and Garfunkel last night of the M5 aftering collecting Demelza

What I have been doing is blending colours on my drum carder, and the words of Sing A Rainbow kept popping into my head - red and yellow and pink and green, orange and purple and blue!  I haven't actually put this particular combination through the carder (it would probably come out a muddy brown) but I have been having the most fun ever with a drum carder.

All this was prompted by a discussion on Ravelry (when isn't it?) and the request to show the result of blending using the custom blending service at World of Wool.  I had used the blending service before, but to put together blends of fibres for dyeing.  My favourite is Polwarth and Silk 75/25 and if you have passed though five times you get the most gorgeous silky soft spinning top - bliss!

What I hadn't done was to use the Custom Blends to mix colours.  I have to admit I am a bit nervous about choosing colours like this, as monitors differ and my conception of a colour might not be how it comes out.  The Gaywool dye Spearmint is a example of this. Spearmint to me is a pale minty green, the Gaywool Spearmint comes out more a Dijon mustard colour.  So do you jump in and risk not getting the colour you're expecting or do you experiment?

You blend.................................

First blend Autumn Leaves was inspired by this picture

For this I blended Black, Mocha, Caramel and Red and added a very small amount of yellow and this was the result

Not quite as light as I had envisged, but perhaps with a touch more orange it would be perfect.  And then I made lots of punis

For the second blending I took more photos so here is the colours I chose

From left to right - Dark Forest Green, Pale Blue, Turquoise Silk, Grass Green, Spearmint, Sherwood Green and what I would call a Dark Blue Green which I think came in a mixed bag. 

This was after the first pass - I added the colours fairly randomly and blended the silk directly on to the drum.

The second, I split the batt into five strips, and then pulled the fibre out and added more silk directly to the drum

Third - just repassed through the carder

Four as Three

And this is the finished product

Spring Meadow (darker than the photo - the light is bad today and the flash bleaches out colours) - may need a little yellow to even out the bluey tones.  Total 50grams of light airey fibre.........