Sunday, April 17, 2011

First Attempt: Spinning & Dying

There is a lovely little yarn shop in Moscow, "The Yarn Underground" which is underneath a music store up 3rd street. Jake and I discovered it yesterday. I bought a ball of rough or unspun wool and a Drop Spindle (quite cheap: 2 oz of wool was roughly $4 and the drop spindle was $9).



I watched a really quick youtube video on how to spin with a drop spindle, but I really didn't quite understand what I was doing after that. I basically just "winged-it" until I ran out of wool. I am pretty sure I was spinning too tightly, since the yarn was twisting up too much. There were parts where the yarn was thicker/chunkier, and others where it was too thin (almost sock-weight). I figured that that would be normal for the first try? At least for someone who really didnt know what she was doing.


So here is what the yarn looks like all wrapped up on the drop spindle. I unravelled it and wrapped it over the end of my coffee table, and then tied strings on each end of the giant loop-thingy I made. The next picture shows the two pots on the stove where I boiled the onion peels to create a dye. I ended up watering the dye down in the end, and I think it might have ruined the strength of the color. I added lavender essential oil to the brews so that they didn't smell too oniony. You can see the yarn in the tin baking tray, ready to be soaked with dye.


Here is what my lovely yarn looked like after being dyed:





2 comments:

  1. It looks pretty. Are you happy with it? I'm impressed with your boldness to try! I think it looks great. :)

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  2. Great job, Casey! Can you use other things, like berries, for dying without the odor or does that make it too sticky? Carrots and beets would probably work too! You and Brooke both inspire me!

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