There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
This weekend was raining and cold. So instead of letting them throw books at each other, I dug out the first wobbly skeins of homespun 2-ply (spun on my Ashford Traditional from the bag of brown fluff which I still haven’t identified but washes up a beautiful soft white) and encouraged the children to get messy with some food colouring.
We mixed the icing dye with some water in jars, put the soaked skeins into oven bags and squirted (with an empty ketchup squirty bottle) the primary-coloured dyes onto the yarn. There was a certain amount of squishing and splashing as they ‘blended’ the colours (read: discovered that most colours when mixed seem to turn into Darkest Swamp) Then a quick splash of vinegar water and the wool was bagged up, sealed in a tupperware tub and put through the dishwasher a la Knitty.com
An hour’s wash, a few more hours cooling down – without touching so it didn’t felt (I recommend a big stick for this part, not for stirring but for defending the yarn from excited little stained hands) and then I rinsed the cooled skeins till the water ran clear. Okay, actually I rinsed them until I lost patience, shouted “Sod it” and just hung them up to drip pastel raindrops all over the shower unit. And here they are (above) nearly dry on the window sill.
They turned out entirely different to what we anticipated. The Littluns and their Big Brother had expected shades of green, purple and orange along with the primary red, blue and yellow. Instead we had autumnal shades of russet, gold, dark brick and mossy greens. All the blue seems to have washed out entirely (there was plenty of it in the water, just none stuck to the wool!) and the red lingers on only in the titian and garnet shades. Still, if the yarn knits up nicely then I might make hats for the children from it – the Big Brother is already requesting knitting lessons which I’m happy to grant. Mind you, I have a horrible premonition… my little monsters wearing their lovely woolly hats when it starts to rain (or their heads get sweaty) and bronze rivulets dripping down their noses.
Dyeing is addictive, it seems. I’m already planning the next foray as I have some dye left and I’ve been foraging in the LYS for some more white yarn. But what I found is so delightfully smooshy that I might just leave it naked and fondle it in secret. No wonder Him Indoors calls this Knitting Porn!
