Playin with Plyin

So I showed y'all a pic of some of the stuff my sister and I dyed with Easter Egg dyes a couple of weeks ago. This is a pic of the soy silk... We did a long progression from greens to blues, to purple, pink and then back down to green. I had about 5 ounces of the soy silk that I spun up on my Joy. It's been giving me fits about what in the sam heck I was going to ply it with. I finally decided to go on ahead and just wind it into a center pull ball and ply it on itself. It's been sitting on the bobbin for a couple of weeks now, but I still had a lot of tangles and some choice words were definitely uttered repetitiously. I didn't have too much waste though and the skein is now soaking and getting the twist set along with some spindle spun BFL and some mystery New Zealand wool roving that I picked up at Dharma Trading company. I dyed both wools in the same batc using natural dyes: Madder, Brazinlwood, Cochineal, Elderberrys and Hollyhocks. Oh my!

The stuff I'm about to show you was mordanted in vinegar. I also had a bunch of wool that I mordanted in alum - but I'm not sure, I think that I used too much alum, or soaked the wool in the alum too long because all that stuff came out gray - ick! My BF liked it, but I overdyed that stuff when I had the Easter Egg dye adventure. Dyeing is so fun - just like being in Kindeygarden again - We had a lot of fun.

The BFL and my most beautious brand new spindle (it's a Kundert - walnut with cherry inlay and weighs in at a whopping 1.1 ozs. I love it!!) is in the back. In the foreground you see the NZ roving with the Cascade Little Si that I spun that on, I'd already wound off the spindle onto an empty label roll - I keep a sharp eye on which label rolls are starting to get emptied and snag them from work, They are so much more sturdy than toilet rolls! My favorites are the ones that I get from our UPS machine. Just a hint for anyone out there that could use good bobbiney type things to wind your spindles off onto.

Can anyone else out there see that the BFL in the back has a sheen to it, while the NZ wool doesn't?

So I plyed and I plyed and I swore a fair amount during the soy silk but I finally came up with a whopping three ozs of purpley wool and 6 of soy silk. I'm quite pleased with both :














OK - well, there's so much more that I want to show you, but I'll leave it here for now.

Have fun!