Did someone say Nuno Felting?

Hi all!
I gotta tell you that I hate to felt.  I go thru all sorts of pains to make sure my fiber DOES NOT felt prior to getting to its new home and is spun up into something wonderful.  But Jenn comes back from Rheinbeck and tells me that Nuno Felting is "in".  And that "kits" are in" and that we should pull something togehter from the shop .......  I agree with her (because she is smart) and get to work on figuring out what Nuno Felting is.  Because you can't build a Kit without knowing what is what......Right?

So I have done some research and I'm working on some instructions using the fiber that I dye. Easy right?  Well.....no.  I can't get the friggin stuff to felt correctly for me.  So this will be the saga of Cheryl's innability to get wool to felt.  Poor Child.

 This is the Hand dyed (by ME!) silk scarf.  Cool huh?  That was supposed to be a gift for Jenn.  Just rewards I guess.....

This is the roving bits I used in a colorway called Plums and Berries in Merino.  Very cool as a spun yarn.

 OK I flick out the necessary fiber on the top - going one way - and on the botton - going the opposite way - carefully and not too heavy, gotta get the fibers to go thru and hold hands....

 Spray it with the water and sprinkle with the "Soap Gel" I made.
I'll go into that later.  Great stuff for cleaning you hands of dye.  Smells wonderful too.  This is as far as the purple/pinks made it...... Bummer it was pretty.

 This is try number two with silk and a copper color........

 Again I had a dyed silk scarf.......So sorry Jenn......  But wait! why is this not felting??????? Hot Water, Agitation, Alklinity........Help!

Tune in later for more exploits  with the Dyenamic Dyestress in "Why won't this darn stuff felt?"
PS: I am not good at this.......

Crappy....oh I mean..... Happy Felting

DD

Kettle Dye your Balls

Hi all,

I'm trying out a cool new technique that I found in "Yarns to Dyed for" by Kathleen Taylor.  What fun!  She give al sorts of information on how to dye yarns for specific projects.

This is "Immersion Dyeing for Graduated Bands of Color" big name for something that is fairly easy.

Bring a BALL of yarn up to a simmer in your kettle.  Make sure this is a ball done on your nostepinne.  I used a center pull ball, when she specifically said not to, and pulled the yarn from the outside.  Which was all well and good until I got closer to the center.  Then the other end popped out and an unholy mess ensued  Take it from me use a BALL!!

Above is the ball simmering in Strawberry dye, and you can see where my end is draping out as I let the dye soak into the yarn.  I used a Superwash Falkland fingering weight.  I was hoping that the superwash would dye quickly, because it drinks up dye like a Irish sailor drinks up beer, but that wasn't the case.  It still took me the better part of 2.5 hours to get this done.

I'm not using my niddy noddy as you can see.  I could have because it is teak but this worked out better for me.  Allowing the the water to drip into the sik between pulling. and keeping the yarn under relatively even tension.  I got this swift from the Auction at Maryland Sheep and Wool.

As the yarn comes off ou can see how the colors are changing each time I add more dye.  The green portion seems to be the largest.  I was going to dye the last part black but decided it wasn't necessary.

Here is the dry skein all pretty and waiting to have its picture taken and put into the shop. 

All in all a pretty cool new technique.  The next one I think will be a variation on a theme.  Bouncing back and forth in between two like colors to see how that will look.

This skein can be purchased from our shop on Etsy.  Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Knitting.....
DD