I’m sad. Tony, Ilene, and Cooper (and Ruby and Elsa- yes we had six dogs in the house) just left and I already miss my friends. I laughed; I cried; I ate way too much good food. I feel better than I have in weeks. Laughter is truly the best medicine; a good dose of love doesn’t hurt either.
It’s time to get back to abnormal life, ready the farmyard for Dalai’s arrival Sunday morning, wash laundry, and scour Shetland fleece. And that’s okay; I feel 100% content, something rather rare for this emotionally complex pretend farmer. Obviously, I need to spend more time with good friends and stop stressing about life’s unchangeable speed bumps. Hmmm, I guess the Dalai Llama’s upcoming arrival is getting me on the pursuit-of-happiness trail.
On my last post, I promised to tell you about the most important fiber related thing I learned in Taos. If you remember, the workshops I enrolled in were spinning with beads, steeks, and garbage yarn (which I skipped in my eagerness to return home to hunky husband). It was during the bead class that one of my classmates showed off (we had a lot of show and tell) a prize-winning fleece she had gotten at Estes Park. It had nice staple length, lovely crimp, and a beautiful dye job.
Since there are as many ways to dye fleece as there are to say poo, we asked her how she did it.
“I just put it in the pot, covered it with water, added vinegar, sprinkled the dye powder, and simmered it for 30 minutes.”
After you washed it, right?
“I didn’t wash it; I put it in dirty.”
How many parts water to vinegar?
“I just poured in the vinegar for a few glugs.”
We continued to bug her for the next million minutes. This was way too simple. I have at least three books on dyeing fiber and they all use pre-washed fleece. They use precise measurements and always reconstitute the dye powder into liquid form before adding it to the fleece. This lady’s method cut literally hours off my fiber preparation time. I couldn’t wait to get home and try it.
At the festival itself, I had purchased two pounds of cormo fleece. It was dirty but not lanolin-saturated and I decided to use this wool as my maiden dirty fiber dyeing voyage. Following her coaching, I filled my dye pot with the unwashed wool, covered it carefully with water (running water over the fleece can felt it), and glugged in some white vinegar. I thought about it and glugged a little more. Then, I mixed yellow and blue powder, took half of it away and added a small amount of black to it, did the same with straight blue (I was going for a smoky look), and kept the blue pure. I added no red.
Here is the dye pot after I sprinkled the powder. I did not touch it after this (fear of felt is rampant inside me). As directed, I simmered the pot for the prescribed half hour, then dumped the wool into the sink to cool, and then followed it with two rinsing soaks.
Here is the finished product. I hand spindled a tiny amount to see the kind of yarn it would make. I am ga-ga over this super time-saving method.
A word to the wise, I repeated the process with some very greasy and dirty merino I purchased on Ebay and wasn’t as successful. The uber-lanolin blocked the dye from penetrating and I had to wash it midway through and dye it a second time. Still, because I did not have to reconstitute the dyes, I saved time.
In the end, it was another successful venture. 
It reminds me of Monet’s Water Lilies.
Being a somewhat obsessive person (okay a really obsessive person), I’d like to spend my now sadly friend-free days dyeing and spinning up a storm but I have to finish spinning the Shetland yarn for the recreation of David’s favorite sweater sweater since I have already begun knitting it.
I now understand why some people have 10 spinning wheels.
So much fiber, so little equipment.
By the way, Pint enjoyed his third birthday very much, details to follow.
Your friends left so soon? I can only hope that means they were able to go back to their undamaged home.
LOVE the dye job! It's hard to tell with the sun streaming in the window behind my computer, but it looks like you got exactly the smoky effect you were looking for. I might have to try that on one of my white or light grey fleeces . . . wonder if it would work with Kool-Aid (my hero :-)? Glad to see you elbow deep in fiber again. I'm feeling some withdrawal because I haven't had time to start a new spinning or knitting project between my state of mind over Rosie and my sister still being here, but hope to remedy that a bit today. Just finished vacuuming the house for the first time since we had to put Rosie down, and I felt like I was erasing the last traces of my baby; so hard!
Posted by: Michelle | October 26, 2007 at 11:44 AM
I like the idea of dying fiber like that. When I have a dirty fleece that I want to dye I wash it and rinse it in vinegar and water and then while it is wet with that I put it in the dye pot and add the dye. That way I skip my old process of drying and picking it twice. I love how your colours turned out. Great job!
Posted by: Meg | October 26, 2007 at 04:50 PM
Cool colors --- wow --- big time saver. Hope your friends' earlier departure bodes well for the state of their home. Air quality is horrid though. But I'm not sure I'd want to leave my home unattended right now, so can understand their need to get back. Glad you are doing better. Must be that Eastern influence finding its way into your life already!
Posted by: Karalyn | October 27, 2007 at 02:37 PM
Wow! I know I'm late to the game, responding to this post, but I just found it, somehow, while googling "dyeing angora". I'm a long-time knitter and new spinner, and I am just blown away by that gorgeous blue-green wool. Awesome! I haven't tried dyeing yet, but now I'm totally tempted.
Posted by: Suzanne V. (Yarnhog) | January 06, 2008 at 11:46 AM