My Spinning and Dyeing History and a bit about Wool

About three years ago I took my third grade class on a field trip called "From Sheep to Shawl" where students were shown and got to "assist" in the steps of sheering, combing, spinning, and weaving. I think I liked it more than the students, though they had fun too. It started me thinking about spinning my own yarn, but then life happened and I didn't start anything for a while.

When I discovered the free class "Know your Wool" from Craftsy, I got the bug. As I said before, I went looking around the internet, found an inexpensive student spindle and a pound of wool from a small farm in the Fingerlakes area of New York state and started watching youtube videos about spinning.

Well, I guess that's not entirely true. I went to Michael's and got some wool roving for felting and used a giant tapestry needle that I rolled along my leg to begin with. I had no idea what I was doing, and it didn't turn out well, but it was amusing enough to make me want to try it the real way.

Anyway, as I was looking for spinning videos I found Chemknits dyeing videos and got intrigued. I started with some solid colored dyeing of some hand spun yarn I had bought, and it turned out beautifully.

 I had started with the white and dyed it red, blue, and green using the Market Pantry food coloring. I am planning on using all this yarn in a stranded pattern I am working on. I'll let you know when the bugs get worked out, or in as the case may be.

As I was working on this, I was also learning to spin. Here is my first bit of yarn. It was about an ounce from the pound that I had bought. It's Cotswold, and while that may test my knitting creativity once I am done spinning, it has been nice to learn on.

Since these beginnings, I have also dyed some of my Cotswold. About 4 ounces are a yellow-orange-red mix and about 8 are different types of green.

I have spun another 6 ounces of the Cotswold, along with 4 ounces of Merino (the pink on my first post), a little bit of Border Leicester and I recently got some Bluefaced Leicester that I am working through. The Leicesters are remarkably different considering how closely related they are, though that may be because the BFL (Bluefaced Leicester) is commercially prepared, and I am trying to clean and prepare the Border myself.

The BFL is easy to draft and creates a nice fine thread that is still quite soft. The overall texture is strong and fuzzy. The Border is much sleeker but a bit more coarse, especially after dyeing it too. It spins very nicely, but it is hard to combine the locks as it is rather slippery, and as I was given a whole fleece, the fibers are about 9 inches long with makes it a bit difficult to start the draft, but once it gets going, it goes fast.

If anyone out there is interested in getting started spinning, dyeing, knitting, or anything else to do with wool or fiber, let me know. I'd love to share resources with you and hear your story. Also if anyone can help me with dyeing yellow to blue without ending up with large amounts of green, I'd love to hear about that too.

Thanks for reading!