Curses, failed again!

Another fun day at the dye pot. I was not quite as successful as Deb, who, it turns out, is the dye queen, but I was happy with most of my results. One thing I learned is that I really don't like Jacquard's kelly green dye. I expect a color called kelly green to be kind of an emerald green. I wanted to dye some roving in rainbow colors with bright red, yellow, and green. I mixed up a bottle of kelly green, thinking it would be a nice deep green. WRONG. It is what I think is a hideous lime green color that definitely should never be mixed with red. I tried carding the roving to blend the colors, but to me, it is still hideous. I definitely need to find a different green. Turns out it wasn't warm enough for solar dyeing, so I didn't try to redeem myself on that front either. I am not having very good luck getting red/yellow/green roving, and I think I am going to give up on that particular idea!

Once we discovered it was lime green, Deb put it to good use and mixed it with purple and that blended together beautifully. She also dyed three skeins of turquoise, pink, and teal for a special project and they are gorgeous. (in the picture on the left, my dog looks kind of a little dead, but really he isn't. He was just rolling in the grass.)

Despite my failure at dyeing my roving, I did dye some yarn I am quite happy with. For the ball of yarn on the right I used some white merino sock yarn from Knit Picks and used three different dilutions of teal, and I am quite happy with how it turned out. I can't wait to knit it up. The turqoise yarn on the left is some of my handspun yarn. I have never dyed my handspun yarn before, I've usually dyed the roving or the locks first and then spun the yarn. It was fun dyeing the yarn. This yarn was one strand of mohair and one strand of Coopworth wool, and I used three different dilutions of the Jacquard turqoise, and I am quite happy with how it turned out. I didn't want it to be real dark and I wanted to have some white mixed in. So I was pleased with the yarn I dyed, despite my failure with the roving.

Today the Knitting Knight was having their Third Anniversary sale and Deb and I were there when the door opened at 10 o'clock. I didn't do too much damage though. I bought a couple of skeins of malabrigo and a few needles I needed for various projects.

As always, you can click on any of the pictures to get a larger view. I used the combined pictures to save downloading time. I have dial-up that usually is only at 26.4 and it takes a long time to upload pictures to the blog. It is faster to combine some of the pictures so I thought I'd give it a try.

That's it for today. Am going to sit and knit because I HAVE to finish the sock I'm working on so I can start a pair with one of my newly dyed yarns.

Keep on spinning!!!