I've been dyeing silk and mohair this past week.
Oh and I bought my first fleece!
Luckily, it was washed for me and most of the vegetable matter was removed. So I'm not sure if it really counts as my first fleece.
It's kid mohair from a goat named Jasmine who lives on Grandview Goats farm.
I couldn't wait to dye it. I threw it in the pot pretty quickly.
And days later, it's still drying! I didn't think ahead to making a drying frame. I put it in a laundry basket with holes and propped it on a clothes drying rack outside.
And in the evenings, I placed it in a pillow case and gave it a little time on my oil filled radiator.
It's straight from the jar Jacquard Acid Dye in Sapphire Blue.
I had some fun with some silk hankies and tussah silk roving too.
I had a few ounces of the hankies so I was just experimenting.
They went from this:
Painted in a haphazard way..reminiscent of 60s tie dye. And then sealed in plastic wrap and into the steamer.
This was so much fun because I had no end in mind. There wasn't much of the fiber so I didn't care if something really ugly happened. In fact, I even courted the horrendous. You might not agree but I ended up with something kind of interesting.
I plied the silk with some mossy green alpaca.
I also dyed some tussah silk roving with thought of selling it.
I really like this one:
This roving was done pretty much similarly to the hankies. Hand painted and then wrapped in plastic and steamed on a low setting so the silk maintains its luster.
I played around a bit with some other colors and some more tussah roving.
Now this one I was less happy with. I was hesitant to sell it and dithered awhile and thought it might be good for me to spin it up myself just to get a better feel for handpainting silk fibers.
On the bobbin:
And then about half of it plied into a skein:
It's so much fun. I think I'll try to squeeze some more in this week.
