Spin and Knit: A bit of diversion

Sometimes I need some diversion from the daily grind and routines.

It's busy on the farm right now, with calving season on the go. The weather is not the best, although here in the southern hemisphere we've just entered our spring season. The daffodils are up, trees are budding,but its cold, wet and windy most of the time, with the emphasis on wet.

When I need some cheering up, there's nothing like playing with colour and fibre.

I had a lot of white washed and carded fibre. Spun enough for a jersey over time but still had fibre left.

Then came a nice sunny weekend and I gave solar dying a go.

Basically this means, you add prepared fibre (soaked in water/ vinegar) to a large jar, add acid dye(s) and water/vinegar and leave the closed jar in the sun to heat up to set the dye.

Thats what I did. putting it together didn't take more then 15 min. And then the waiting began.

But the sun wasn't strong enough just yet to finish the job as the dye was still visible in the water surrounding the fibre. I finished it off by putting the jars in a pot with water to bring to the simmer for a while.

I can see that this method would be great to use over the summer. If you need bigger amounts of fibre, you can use buckets, plastic bags or 100 litre drums or what ever you have lying around.

It does require more patience then other methods probably, depending on the sun's strength.

Here are the results of my trial ; 4 lots of about 100g in very different tones;