Ready for Fibreholics

These little beauties went in the post yesterday to be included the next Fibreholics box. They are (clockwise from top-left) Grey Shetland in ‘Bay of Fires’, Oatmeal BFL in ‘Caveside’, Zeehan yarn in ‘Redgum’ and ‘Braddon’ merino/nylon sock yarn in ‘Bush Mint’

This round has a theme of ‘Summer garden party’ or parties in general as the co-operative has now been running for one year. I’m seeing the red fibre and yarn as summer berries, the green as a lovely summer lawn, and the purple as cottage garden flowers.

I’ve been doing plenty of dyeing recently. Some alpaca/merino 4 ply.

And I’ve been dyeing all sorts of re-discovered gems (aka the last 100-200g of a batch or blend that got shoved in a box and forgotten about). Pictured below is some Superwash BFL/Seacell, UK Alpaca, Fawn Alpaca/Silk as well as some of my usual Oatmeal BFL.

I’ve also been playing about with hand painting with fibre reactive dyes. This is some seacell which I put in out in the sun this afternoon to try to get the temperature up.

These are different to the usual dyes I use so the colours aren’t quite the same. They don’t need to be heated like the acid dyes, but I read somewhere they take better when they get a little warm – a couple of sunny days should be just perfect. When I’ve dyed Seacell and other cellulose fibres before, a lot of the dye has run back out when I rinse, resulting in a pale colour, so I hope this works. I’ll post the results in a few days once I’ve rinsed and dried.