Mustard Seed Yarn Lab

Last weekend I had plans to go to NY on Saturday to hang out with my sister (Shelly) and come home that night. We were going to take a dye class together. But on Friday, my little sister (Liana) got into a bad car accident and was in the hospital with lots of stitches in her face and a broken orbital bone and broken nose…among other expected discomforts. So I didn’t come home Saturday night, I stayed with her to see if I could be of any help or comfort. As sad as I was for her, I was just so happy and thankful to God that I still have my little sister. Last weekend could have been a LOT worse.

Dye class was fun though. I don’t really feel like I learned anything new, but I DID learn that I don’t really like dying yarn in a microwave, which was a method I hadn’t had a chance to try yet. Here’s a picture I stole from my sister’s blog showing all us ladies in the process of pouring the dyes over our yarn. We were in a super cool room above a bar in Chatham NY. That’s me in the back right corner, and my sister is in the front right.

All the women there were so friendly and fun to hang out with. But I was not happy with the results I got for my yarn. (If you’d like to see Shelly’s yarn results, click here.) First I had this:

It was bulky yarn dyejob gone horribly wrong. My colors turned to mush as we were told to squeeze out all the liquid before putting the yarn in the microwave, so in an attempt to save my skein, I threw on some red and purple, hoping for the best. When I saw it hanging here I thought…hmmmm…maybe it’s not going to be so bad…almost cool? I was wrong.

I don’t like it. It looks like a color blind monkey dyed this. I call it Muck.

Next, I thought I’d go for a purple and red skein. I love purple and red together. But again, when we squeezed out the excess water and dye, I ended up with this:

That’s a whole lot of raspberry and purple, and when I spun it into a skein, the pinkness of it was overwhelming…just too…raspberry. So today, I could not bear it anymore and I took that skein of raspberry vomit and tightly tied off 4 even sections and threw it in a pot of black and boiled 90% of the raspberry right out of it. The result is hanging in the other room right now, drip drying on the rack, and I got exactly what I wanted. I will post a picture of it here tomorrow or Saturday, as soon as it’s fully dry and wound into a skein or a cake. I think you’ll like it. Yes, you.

My third skein also made me unhappy.

Now, I’ll admit, it doesn’t look all that bad in this particular picture. But it was actually blue, teal and white. Is there a worse color than teal??? It’s just offensive really. I was not having this in my house, so a couple days ago I made a pot of what I thought was brown…a yellowish brown, I guess….and look at what happened to this blue/teal skein!

Good Lord! It’s fabulous! Now the above picture isn’t showing just how rich the mix of colors appeared, and it’s actually much more green than this. Try this one:

That’s a little closer to the actual color but still not as rich, and it’s hard to make out just how many hints of different colors show through. It’s a mix of different greens and hints of brown. I’m finding the hardest part of this whole yarn dyeing endeavor is trying to get a picture that’s accurate. I don’t think I’ve been successful once yet, and that’s frustrating, since I want to sell my yarn online and this is the only way people will be able to see each skein. But anyways, I’m seriously happy with it. What do YOU think?

Next, I have some of my hand spun yarn to show off. Can you even believe that fluff turned into the skein you see in front of it??

Now that is one ply of Blue Faced Leicester wool and right now I’m working on spinning the rest of it into a second cake. When done, I will ply them together to end up with a real skein of (hopefully) finger weight yarn. I will be sure to show you when it’s done. It’s a slow process, as I spin on a drop spindle, but I love it. My sister is learning to spin on a spinning wheel and she let me try it out this past weekend and it was sooooo HARD! It always looked so easy when you see other people do it. Nope. Not easy. She tried my drop spindle and felt the same way about it! Ha!

So I’ll do my best to post a picture of how the raspberry skein turned out as soon as it is dry. Make sure to check back in a couple days!