I was a little worried when I ran out of yarn for Branden’s sweater. I had plenty of fiber left, but I’ve heard that it’s hard to spin the same weight twice. Add to that the fact that I’d spun a bunch of fingering/laceweight in between, and I wasn’t sure I could get the same yarn again.

Turns out I needn’t have worried. Sometimes well-worn ruts work to your advantage. Here’s a photo of some of the old yarn next to the new yarn that I plied last weekend. (The strand laid across the top is coming from the ball.)

And here’s a comparison of the two weights together.

Not bad, huh? I can feel a slight difference between them in the knit fabric, but only barely. It’s good to know that I can go back and spin more on demand (at least for this weight).

Once I had the rest of the transition yarn, it was clear sailing on the body of the sweater. The dark brown feels like it’s taking forever, but really it’s moving right along.

I’m a little surprised that the 2:1 to solid dark brown transition is so sharp. The top of the sweater is plain grey, then a 1:2 brown to grey, then a 2:1 brown to grey. You’d think there would be a smooth transition the whole way, but that little bit of grey really dominates in both mixed yarns, leaving a big difference between the gradient colors and the solid brown. One of those interesting things you could only know by trying it, I suppose.

Fall has arrived in force here in Chicago. Not many colors to see yet, but the weather settled in last week, with daytime temperatures in the 60’s and getting down into the 40’s overnight. This weekend has been grey and a little damp, so we’re beginning to really feel the chill. We’ve put on sweaters and started drinking cups of tea, and today we’re washing the winter comforter for the bed. Time to start knitting faster!

Well, I suppose it’s about time I told you about our trip to WI Sheep and Wool a couple of weekends ago. For once, I did remember to bring my camera to a fiber festival, but I can’t say I took a lot of pictures.

We arrived around lunchtime on Saturday, and spent the whole afternoon wandering the two big show barns full of yarn. That part is all a blur of yarn and fiber and friendly faces from the Madison spinning guild.

I picked up a few more dye colors, adding Navy, Russet, Crimson, and Hot Fuchsia to the collection. I forsee more sampling in my future.

And we scored a set of sample cards from my friend Anne’s Blackberry Ridge woolen mill, which I hope will produce a scheme for a colorwork sweater sometime very soon.

Finally, I picked up two skeins of a subtly shaded blue-black yarn from Miss Babs to go with the skein from Stitches. I’ve been noodling around with a design that I’m pretty excited about, but it’s an “interesting” construction and therefore requires much sampling to make sure it will work. I think I’m on (very small) sample sweater #5 now, trying to get the shaping right before committing to a full sized version.

My favorite find of the day was this 2.5 pounds of Cormo roving, just waiting to be dyed up and spun into this years’ handspun sweater. We bought it from the farmer who’d grown the wool and had it processed, and it is beautiful stuff. There’s some for me and some for the shop, once I figure out what to do with it. (Blank slate syndrome is even stronger with “special” stuff.)

We also went to the fleece silent auction, where I resisted a whole room full of fleeces just begging to be taken home.

Many of the fleeces were pretty dirty looking, but there were several Targhees that were calling my name. I didn’t even know I liked Targhee, but it’s now high on my must-get-someday list.

During the afternoon, we met up with Becky and her mom Sandy, and Branden pitched the tent. We spent the evening knitting, plastic-canvasing (Sandy), and reading (Branden) before turning in.

In the morning, we wandered over to the breakfast hall, where Branden ate and I spent a long time talking with the guys are Hogge Millwork about their drum carders. During the walk through the market, and especially during the silent auction, it had begun to seem like quite a good idea to get a carder to help me process fleeces faster (so I can buy more!), and to explore making batts. I particularly like the Hogge carders because they are modular and can be upgraded over time rather than bought all at once. Something to think about, but not quite yet.

We also wandered over to the Hall of Breeds, where we got to see some newly minted lambs.

A while ago, Linda sent me a series of photos, suggesting that they might make a good colorway.

Since I love purple (and pansies!), I was excited to give it a try. And so I sampled.

I ended up with a huge range of colors just from combining a few of my dyes in different ratios. And then, the trick was to choose the right colors to match the photos. This was my favorite of the photos she sent:

Look at all those cheery little faces! I particularly wanted to capture that bright spot of yellow in the center of the flowers. I also wanted to capture the gradual transition from blue to white. After much hemming and hawing over which purples were exactly right, I ended up with this fiber:

By keeping the color patches shorter than a staple length in most cases, the colors should blend as the fiber is spun, hopefully giving a gradient from pure purple all the way down to white. I left a lot more white on the fiber than I normally would, both to represent the white and blue flowers, and to give room to spin the yellow without mixing it too much with the purple. (In places where it does mix, I think it should give quite a nice green, judging from the couple of spots where the color touched on the fiber. You can see a tiny bit in the lower right corner of the photo.)

Next, I focused on these little beauties.

Here, I loved the little veins of dark blue running through a shaded purple. I started out with a purple base, and then added highlights of dark purple mixed with blue on top.

The dark “blue” here is really a violet blue. I took photos of these fibers once with my camera just after I dyed them, then Branden tried a few days later. At first, we blamed our lack of success on poor lighting (evening shots are never as good). Then, yesterday, Branden spent about two and a half hours taking photos of these four fibers before we got even close to color accuracy. Apparently purple is just hard to photograph. We have explored whole new frontiers in camera settings, and this is as close as we could get. So imagine that those dark blue regions are really a more intense version of the light purple (which did come out accurately), with a bit more blue added.

The next two rovings were even harder to photograph, but I think we did finally manage to get accurate colors on them. The first was actually supposed to be a colorway from this photo, which Linda processed in photoshop to help the colors stand out:

Aren’t they beautiful? I especially like the impressionist one; it really could be printed and hung on the wall.

Unfortunately, I got distracted while I was mixing the dyes for this color, and forgot to add blue to one of my dyes. Instead, I ended up adding red twice, which meant that I really didn’t get the purples I was going for.

You can see hints of the iris colors in there, where the dyes with the right mixture stayed unmixed, but this really wasn’t where I intended to go with this fiber.

Sometimes the dye has a mind of its own, though, and in this case I was amused to discover how  little this “mistake” colorway had strayed from our theme. When we were at the farmers’ market yesterday morning, we saw this little guy:

Branden snapped a picture on his phone, and later we compared it to the not-iris colorway. As it turns out, it just wanted to be a maroon pansy instead.

And finally, I made a deep, saturated colorway in purples and blacks, inspired by this photo:

I made a mosaic here, too, to help me pick out the colors. Isn’t it amazing how many shades there are in that one photo?

I didn’t have quite the right purple for this photo in my samples. I think the blue needs to be a little more subdued than the dyes that I have. So I added black to most of the purples, and then added some spots of pure black to deepen the color even more. I ended up with this:

It’s not an exact match, but I think it’s pretty close. Of all the colorways I dyed from these photos, I think this one is my favorite. I am working hard to resist the urge to claim it for myself.

So that’s my exploration of pansy purples. There are so many colors you could create from these photos that I think I’m likely to return to this colorway series someday. I’m especially interested to keep sampling in the purples region of the spectrum, because I picked up some navy blue dye at WI Sheep and Wool last weekend that I think it might just give me those shades that I’m missing in the black velvet sample. And really, I would wear any one of those colors, so more experimentation is probably in order.

Things have been a bit stop and go over here lately (both literally and figuratively). We had the rush of the move, then the slower pace of settling in and working from home for a few weeks. That was great, until the work started to dry up and the guilt complex kicked in (I am constitutionally incapable of being paid for not doing any work).

Then there was a job interview, which is very likely to turn into a real job. But big wheels turn slowly, and the company is a bit of a behemoth. So I might know in a few weeks. Or a few months. No one really knows. (This is just as frustrating for the people trying to hire as it is for me, I’m sure.)

In the meantime, I’m now going into the lab that I might possibly end up working in sometime in the future, except I’m going in as a postdoc, borrowing lab space. So I get to try out the commute, without the paycheck to pay for a second car.

Branden has been experimenting with a combination of bike and train to get to work, which has helped a lot (it takes me 2 hours to drop him off and get to work…not fun.) Still, things are a little up in the air. I need to be ready to do work the moment that it’s available, but there hasn’t been a lot ready to hand. The couple of weeks at home with no work gave me more time to play with fibery things, but now I find myself with a blog backlog just waiting for some pictures that I’m not home to take.

Today, it was almost decided that I should just stop working in the lab for now, and resume again if they really hire me. (Big companies also have lots of red tape.)

But now, it looks like I’ll be keeping on as before.

Stop and go.

Too bad you can’t knit while driving.

I’ve been knitting away on Branden’s MacGyver sweater, spun from the wool I bought at last year’s Wisconsin Sheep and Wool festival. I would have liked to have it done in time for this year’s festival, but it looks like that just isn’t going to happen. Since it’s a Raglan knit from the top, it gets slower and slower with each round. I split off for the sleeves last weekend, so things briefly got fast again.

Unfortunately, the extra boost from the  smaller diameter didn’t last long. I’m into the blended section of the knitting now, and the knitting was just whizzing along, until I suddenly found myself out of yarn.

I’m not sure what happened, since both Branden and I are quite sure that I had spun up more of the mixed skeins from the two fleeces. One thing is certain, though, and that is that there is no more of the 2-dark 1-light plied yarn to be had. I’ve looked everywhere, and there is nothing left to do except decide that I never actually spun it.

So, it’s back to the wheel for me, before any more knitting can be done on the sweater.

Before I could spin more, I needed to ply the Falkland that I’ve been working on. (What a shame, huh?)

I ended up with 950 yds of yarn from my 8 oz of fiber. I haven’t set the twist yet, but I have a feeling that it is going to bloom from a slightly heavy laceweight into a fingering weight yarn when washed. I was hoping to get a lacy sweater out of this fiber, but I think I’d probably need something more like 1100-1200 yards for that. I am now debating - do I stash it to wait for the perfect project, dream up something else to do with it now, or cross my fingers and knit for a sweater? If the lace is open enough, I might just make it, but it will be cutting it close.

You would think that being stuck on my big knitting project would have given me tons of time to finish making the mate for this sock that I finished last weekend:

But no, I’m afraid that it’s partner has barely progressed past the cast on. I may have a chance to knit on it tonight, if I’m lucky. The yarn is Blackberry Ridge Mer-made, and even though you can’t see it, there are blue and teal and purple all mixed together in the skein. I’m very pleased with the fact that there is also no pooling whatsoever, and I didn’t even need to do anything to avoid it.

Now that fall is coming, I’m thinking that I’d better hurry up and get knitting on that sock. It will be nice to have another pair when the weather gets cold. I’m wearing my first wool socks of the season today; it’s a beautiful, blustery day here, with temperatures in the low 60’s. After the heat that we’ve been having, that feels downright cold (it was in the upper 90’s 2 days ago). We have all the windows open to air out the house while it’s nice out, so it’s been nice to have some warm things to put on while the cool breeze blows through.

I told Branden a couple of weeks ago that I must absolutely not – for any reason – buy another raw fleece at Wisconsin Sheep and Wool this fall. I still have a fleece washed and waiting to be combed, and I just haven’t been getting around to it. I love the fiber, and I have a serious weakness for fleeces, but I really don’t need another.

Well. We all know what happens next, right?

While I was back in Boston, my college roommate and I went to visit a friend who works as the caretaker for a historic farm museum in Rhode Island, called Coggeshall Farm. It’s a fully functional farm on 4 acres in seaside New England.

We helped pick cucumbers and gooseneck squash from the farm garden.

And were followed around by a friendly rooster.

Shelley showed us around the old farmhouse.

It’s chock full of interesting tools, like this cheese press.

And a functional loom.

As well as a beautiful great wheel.

We also got to meet the farm donkey,

(and horse and steer), as well as a curious trio of turkeys.

There is also a flock of sheep, but they are allowed to roam at will and were off enjoying the summer day, nowhere to be seen. But in the basement, we found their fleeces.

The sheep are a rare breed called Gulf Coast. They came to the New World with the Spanish, and have been adapting to life in the warm Southeast ever since. According to the American Livestock Breed Conservancy, they are one of the four most critically endangered sheep breeds in the world, with only about 2000 sheep left (more interesting info about them here, from another small farm that raises them).

It just so happens that they also have beautiful wool.

The fiber is very fine, and it has a ton of crimp. The staple is about 4-5″ long, and the wool was in great shape. I don’t know the name of the shearer, but Shelley said that he comes in and hand shears, and he did an amazing job. I’ve had a hard time finding even a couple of second cuts.

The fleece could have been skirted more aggressively; I threw out about a half of a small grocery bag of fiber that I didn’t deem worth the effort to clean, but I decided to try some of the more doubtful parts (the small pile on the right in the picture) and was very impressed with how well they cleaned up.

Since the sheep are free to roam, there are a few burrs in the fiber here and there, but it’s generally extremely free of vegetable matter for an uncoated animal.

The majority of the fleece was also surprisingly clean (for a dirty sheep), and turned the most beautiful white when I washed it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t use hot enough water the first time around, so the locks didn’t fully open up and release their lanolin. So this weekend I used my hand cards and opened up the locks. (That’s is the “dirty” part of the fleece, below.)

Then I rewashed them in hotter water, and they came out beautifully.

The dirtier sections that I “reclaimed” are slightly stained in spots, but will be fine for dyeing.

I’m still working on the cleaner parts of the fleece; I’m doing all of the washing with 5 gallon buckets on the patio, so it’s taking a while to get through. (This is the cleaner fiber, before teasing open the locks.)

With a 7.5 lb fleece, I think I have my work cut out for me.

Since I know that some of you will ask, Shelley does have a few more fleece in the basement. There are a total of three from this year, and a few more from last years’ shearing. I looked at the three newer ones, and I’d say that they are all top quality. Her asking prices are really unreasonably low, so I’d get in touch if you’re interested. Her email is:   s dot otis at coggeshallfarm dot org.

It recently occurred to me that the fact that I now live in Chicago means that I am now very, very close to Stitches Midwest. (Sometimes it takes me a while to catch on.)

Since it’s only about 40 minutes from our house, my friend Becky came down for a fiber weekend. Neither of us is really in stash acquisition mode at the moment, but we wanted to go check out the market. And so it happened that we spent about 5 hours on Saturday wandering through a convention center full of yarn.

We knew we were in the right place when we saw this in the parking lot

Fortunately, Becky had a camera in her phone to snap a picture, since I was a bad, bad blogger and forgot my camera at home. (You are not surprised.)

The market itself is all a bit of a blur. There was yarn. A lot of it. There was so much variety, that it was a little hard to take it all in. We walked the entire show before purchasing anything, which is just how I like to shop. It gives me time to just look at things without feeling tempted to buy, and then at the end I go back and buy the things that I really remember and that stuck out as unique or interesting in some way. It helps me cut down on the impulse purchases, and it guarantees that I don’t blow the budget on something I love and then go to the next booth just to find something that’s 10 times better. Honestly, I think it’s the only way I can make it through a market that big in one piece.

This time, I had a focus for my browsing, too. While we were back in Boston last weekend, I asked my grandmother if she’d be willing to knit me a sweater for Christmas. She knits beautifully, and is always churning things out for charities, strangers, and just about anyone else that could use a knitted item, but she only knits on request. She knit me a small afghan a few years ago, but that’s the only knitted item I have from her. I was thrilled that she agreed, and she was thrilled to get a request, which just works out perfectly. So now I am in search of the perfect sweater.

I had narrowed the choices down to two sweaters from Twist Collective: the Metro cardigan, and the Primrose path pullover. I went to the market looking for a yarn.

It was a tough choice, but eventually I found it. I ended up with four skeins of Madeline Tosh Pashmina, in Rose.

It’s a tiny bit lighter weight than the gauge listed for the Primrose path, but I think it will work well. It has some wool content rather than being all bamboo/silk, so I think it will be a little warmer and a little easier on the hands (both are good things). And, it’s just a beautiful yarn. I hope it’s as nice for her to knit with as it will be for me to wear. (It’s a little hard to resist the urge to cast on myself, honestly.)

Next, I bought some laceweight alpaca silk from Just Our Yarns.

I’ve had a skein of their tencel marinating in the stash for several years, and I’ve been dying to use it. Their booth was just full of beautiful woven scarves, and they were very generous with their time, chatting about the different weave structures and how they use color in their projects. We spent a long time there on the first pass through the market, and then went back to pick up some laceweight to make a woven scarf. This may just be the next project on the loom…I’m really excited to see how it comes out.

Both Becky and I were surprised to find ourselves a little ambivalent about a lot of the yarn at the show. Part of it was probably the overwhelm factor, but part of it was also the fact that we can find a lot of these yarns in our local yarn shops, and we’d tend to want to support them instead, given the choice. There were a lot of resellers rather than indie dyers or company owners there. I guess that’s to be expected from a big show, but we were surprised to find ourselves resisting temptation rather well, considering the circumstances. There were so many beautiful things, but not too many that we absolutely had to have.

And then, I ran into this:

It’s a skein of Toasty Toes from Interlacements. I’ve never heard of them before, but this skein called me over from a booth or two away. I keep saying that these are not really my colors (especially that pink), but this skein commanded that it must be bought, and that it must be knit. With black.

I even broke my stash rule for this one: I have no idea what it will become. But it had to come home, and it will be knit up as some kind of highlight against a black background.

I find that the colors I love most often take me by surprise. They’re things I don’t think of as “my” colors, but they stand out or create highlights in interesting ways that work with my usual color palette. And that palette has been getting bolder of late, moving away from only earth tones and into jewel and (apparently) even brighter shades. I don’t know yet what this will be. I’m frankly still a little shocked at the fact that it made its way home with me. But this skein has a mind of its own, and some very definite ideas of what it should become. I’m excited to find out what they might be.

After the market, we made our way home again and spent the rest of the day cooking and knitting. This morning, Becky got in some spinning time while I worked on teasing apart locks of the raw fleece that followed me home from Boston last week. I’ll tell you…the fiber is getting pushy around here lately. I’ll really be in trouble when we go to Wisconsin Sheep and Wool in a couple of weeks…

As I mentioned the other day, Linda put a bug in my ear about pansy purple. When I looked at my sample cards, though, I found that there wasn’t much to choose from. I only had two cards of dyes straight from the jar, with no real color mixing studies. And so I set about making more purples.

The opportunity to sample is one of my favorite things about working in a new color family. It gives me a chance to combine dyes in ways I haven’t thought of before, and it widens my palette at the same time.

This time, it also gave me the chance to try some new dyes. I have 8 or so new dye colors that I’ve bought over the past year but haven’t played with yet. That’s partly because there is so little time, but it’s also partly because there can be freedom in a small palette. Still, there is nothing quite as exciting as adding new colors to the collection. Since I was planning to play with purples, I chose the colors closest to red and blue, and made up standard samples for Turquoise, Brilliant Blue, Cherry Red, and Vermilion.

(Sorry about the strange photo – WordPress is refusing to upload that picture nicely, for some reason. Just imagine that the whole picture were as bright as that bottom bit…I have no idea why it’s having trouble with that. It looks fine on my computer.)

Then I took the reds and mixed them with a selection of my favorite blues and blue-greens. I only did these in two dilutions; one very concentrated, and one pretty dilute. That should be enough to give me an idea of the range of colors available from each combination.

Next, I took my stock purple and burgundy dyes, and added reds and blues to see what colors I could tease out of them. I ended up with a range all the way from rosy pink to periwinkle blue; lots of colors to choose from.

And then, since I knew I was looking for bluish-purples for the pansies, I picked my favorite color combination so far, and did a 2:1, a 1:1, and a 1:2 mixture of a purple and a blue to get the full range of colors possible from those two dyes. (The top card in this photo is another red-mixed-with-blue; the bottom two are the changing ratio set.)

There are so many great colors in these samples! I am sure we’ll see many of them again, and I’m excited to add so many more colors to the sample collection. Having new colors always invites new combinations, and I am getting quite a collection. Just think of all the possible colorways!

I don’t usually get political and ranty here, but this post has me all riled up. It’s a continuing theme that has emerged so many times that it’s time to talk about it. So here I am, mounting my soap box.

The fact that I am a feminist does not mean that I cannot be a woman.

I have a right to be girly. I have a right to be butch. I have a right to wear long skirts and high heeled shoes, makeup and fake eyelashes if I want. I have a right not to.

Every time a feminist undermines another woman’s right to be herself, she pulls the rug from under her own cause. She tears down the very foundations of the ideals that she is proclaiming. She says to be a feminist – but for God’s sake don’t be girly. Be a woman, by pretending to be a man.

You know what? That’s not enough for me. That’s not what my grandmothers and my mother and my sisters in feminism fought for. They fought for the right to exist, as we are, and to be treated as equals. And that applies whether or not you choose to wield pointy sticks and bake cupcakes.

Twice my spinning group was hosted by a very nice woman who did not spin. Twice she made loud comments about not being “domestic.” But the way she said it, she meant domesticated, in that particularly sneering way that comes from a certain type of feminist when discussing those of us who choose to create beauty, meaning, and physical representations of love through our craft. I bit my tongue out of politeness and turned my cheek to her ignorance. But let me tell you, no one in that room was domesticated. Domesticated is for cats, not for women (and even cats defy the term).

More than half of the women in that particular group hold advanced degrees in science and technology. Or law. One is an editor. Most of us are highly educated and career-oriented. All of us are brilliant women who are smart enough to know that what you do with your spare time has nothing to do with whether or not you command respect.

And I think that that is more powerful. I think it means more to be able to do what you choose without caring how others will see it. To me, it is time to relinquish the old aggressive feminism that defines us by what we are not, in favor of the progressive feminism that allows us to be who we are.

We are women. We are leaders. We are successful, and we are determined to have a career, on our own terms. We might also wear skirts and bake cupcakes. Or maybe we wear a burqa. Or studded leather. Doesn’t really matter, does it?

We are soft, gentle and caring, and we’re tough as nails. We make peace when we can, trouble when we must, and we raise hell when we know it’s time to shout. We love and nurture our men  and our families, while protecting our selves and demanding that our own needs be met. We refuse to live our lives in fear of how we will be perceived, and instead we spend them pursuing whatever interests strike our fancy.

I do not believe that forcing women to be aggressive, testosterone-happy brutes advances the cause of feminism in any way. I think it puts us back 50 years. Being a stereotypical feminist is no better than being a stereotypical housewife. You are still defining yourself on someone else’s terms.

I don’t find that acceptable.

Defining yourself by the stereotypes that you do not fill will never free you from them. You have to be brave enough to be who you are, on your own terms. Appearances be damned.

So let’s stop this, right now. Let’s get over this undermining of women by other women in the name of liberation. Let’s stop for a second and think about what we say we’re fighting for – the right to be heard, the right to pursue our dreams and opportunities, and the fundamental prerogative to do that in whatever way we see fit.

And now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go knit.

The moment has now arrived – I can tell you what I’ve been up to. (I’ve gotten confirmation that the surprise has been had, and it is now safe to post all the fun details.)

This is the third fiber in the latest series of dyeing posts. (Look back at the colors; you’ll see that they really are almost the same. Amazing how much variety you get just by applying the colors differently.) I thought that I’d share a little bit about the process of dyeing this one, to make up for the whispers and the suspense.

I got word a couple of weeks ago that Jan had fallen prey to the spinning bug at Sock Summit. And there is nothing like a little good fiber to start a spinner on her way, now is there? So I did a little research, and I enlisted an accomplice. (Sisters are a wonderful thing, especially when they know addresses for mailing things on the sly.)

After poking around on the Twinset blog for a while, I found this photo of a peacock that frequents Jan’s beautiful new house. Look at those colors!

As soon as I found it, I knew that this had to be the color. Now, it was just a matter of translating it into fiber. The blue and the dark spruce green were obvious; they’re what I think of as traditional peacock colors. The gray in his wings was unexpected, though.

And when he opens his tail, the browns and the lime green pop out.

When I look at a photo, I look first for the dominant colors. Then I look for the unexpected ones (like that fabulous bright green). In this case, the dominant hues were strong, vibrant colors. I wanted something to ground them and balance their intensity. The gray and the brown came in here; subtle background colors to help show off the rest.

Next, I went to my sample cards, and plucked out colors that came close.

Next, I needed to decide how to lay them on the fiber. I wanted long repeats of the same color, so that they really stand out from one another. That meant that the dye needed to cover more than a staple length (and sometimes two or three, to make the long repeats really long). The proportion of fiber dyed in each color would determine  the weight of each color in the final yarn. Blue, of course, is dominant. Then the greens, and the brown and gray to balance them out.

I divided the fiber up into sections, and then decided which colors would blend the best at the joins between color repeats. I didn’t want the colors to blend too abruptly, so I chose to paint in order; dark blue to dark green. Light green to brown, brown to gray. Subtle changes that should help to keep the colors intact.

Unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture of that step in the process (I was too excited about how it was coming out).

Here’s a picture of the final fiber, instead.

Within each section, I started with my base dilution, and then added in splashes of more concentrated dye to keep the colors dynamic. See all those different shades?

I must say that I am thoroughly pleased with the results. Proud as a peacock, perhaps.

Because I loved these colors so much, I dyed another 4 oz, same as the first.

Now that the first has safely arrived, the second has gone to join its siblings on Etsy.

Don’t they look beautiful together? (It’s like the litters of kittens we used to foster; I know it’s time and it’s for the best, but I hate to split them up!)

Up next, we’ll be taking the dyeing in a whole new color direction: Linda has gotten my brain churning with visions of pansy purple.