So very sorry it has taken me so, so long to post something for May's Woolly Wednesday.
I have done a reasonable amount of spinning in the past month. I spun up some darker brown zwartble dawn spent me which was just as lovely a spin as the lighter grey.
And since I had been spinning Zwartble I thought I would spin up some black Zwartble I have. It was not as soft and such a wonderful draft to spin as Dawn's grey Zwartble crosses but it was nice to give it a try anyhow. The wool is black with sunbleached gold tips so a lovely resulting yarn.
I then moved on to spinning some Cotswold - my favourite. It turned out beautifully and my son has almost finished knitting a dog with some of it.
So here is the black Zwartble, white Cotswold and grey Zwartble cross. I navajo plied each of these and am really happy with my resulting yarns!
I have also been doing more natural dyeing in the last few weeks. I had a packet of turmeric gathering dust in the kitchen cupboard so used that to dye some of that Lleyn I spun up. (I seem to have abandoned spinning up the rest of that second fleece for now!). Such bright yellow! Apparently, turmeric dyed wool does tend to fade so not sure what I will use this lot for.
I also had a bag of dried calendula petals in the cupboard and dyed two skeins of Lleyn yarn with that using alum as mordant. A lovely gentle warm yellow. Unfortunately, the colour in the picture doesn't reflect the true colour.
And finally, with all the fields of dandelions about in the past few weeks, I spent ages picking lots and lots and lots of dandelion flowers and dyed up three skeins of Lleyn. I resulting colour is a pale yellow/green. I am not too happy with this so I plan to pick even more dandelions and attempt to dye again and see what results I get.
We have been adding tufts of wool to the bushes and trees in our garden. It is lovely to see the wool get taken by birds to add to their nests!
I have now moved on to spinning white mohair.
And that is all from me for now!
Enjoy the rest of May! Shearing time nearly here!!
I have done a reasonable amount of spinning in the past month. I spun up some darker brown zwartble dawn spent me which was just as lovely a spin as the lighter grey.
And since I had been spinning Zwartble I thought I would spin up some black Zwartble I have. It was not as soft and such a wonderful draft to spin as Dawn's grey Zwartble crosses but it was nice to give it a try anyhow. The wool is black with sunbleached gold tips so a lovely resulting yarn.
I then moved on to spinning some Cotswold - my favourite. It turned out beautifully and my son has almost finished knitting a dog with some of it.
I have also been doing more natural dyeing in the last few weeks. I had a packet of turmeric gathering dust in the kitchen cupboard so used that to dye some of that Lleyn I spun up. (I seem to have abandoned spinning up the rest of that second fleece for now!). Such bright yellow! Apparently, turmeric dyed wool does tend to fade so not sure what I will use this lot for.
 |
| Turmeric dyed handspun |
I also had a bag of dried calendula petals in the cupboard and dyed two skeins of Lleyn yarn with that using alum as mordant. A lovely gentle warm yellow. Unfortunately, the colour in the picture doesn't reflect the true colour.
 |
| Calendula dyed handspun |
And finally, with all the fields of dandelions about in the past few weeks, I spent ages picking lots and lots and lots of dandelion flowers and dyed up three skeins of Lleyn. I resulting colour is a pale yellow/green. I am not too happy with this so I plan to pick even more dandelions and attempt to dye again and see what results I get.
 |
| Dandelion dyebath |
I have now moved on to spinning white mohair.
And that is all from me for now!
Enjoy the rest of May! Shearing time nearly here!!
