A first adventure in dying....

I've been dying (sorry) to try my hand at dying my own wool for quite a while, and although there are a few projects that I'd like some hand dyed yarn for, at the moment, I can't find any undyed 10ply yarn, and it's probably best not to practice (play) with the stuff I really want any way. I had got some undyed 2-3ish ply on a cone though, and thought that I could have some fun with some food colour......
First of all I wound my wool into a skein, as I want it to be self striping, I set chairs about 2.5m apart, and wound the wool around the backs. I secured it with little bits of wool at various intervals, so it wouldn't get too knotted.
Next I soaked it in about a cup of water and cup of white vinegar for about an hour and a half.
Then I mixed my colours in old jam jars, half a cup of vinegar, a cup of water and about 30 drops of each colour into each jar. It sounds like quite a bit, but I'm hoping for a really strong colour. I'm using hansells food colouring, red and blue.
I squeezed the water out of the wool, and put roughly half into each jar.
I then placed them into the microwave and zapped them for 1 min, then moved the yarn slightly so that the white bit was now in the colour.


I continued to zap in minute intervals moving the wool each time, so that the middle bit had plenty of exposure to the dye.
I'm not sure exactly how long it took, but after a while the water in the red jar became clear, and the blue one clearish. I then tipped the lot into the sink, and once it had cooled a bit, rinsed it with clean water.



After squeezing the water out I hung it to dry, and later on, I'll be winding into a ball.
The next plan is to knit a pair of little baby socks with it, and see if the self striping effect actually works........
More pics to follow.

New stock

It's perhaps really quite sad, but I'm really excited about getting more new stock in. Yesterday I got a big box through the post, and rather than Christmas gifts, it had some new goodies for NZ wools There were some brand new bamboo circular needle sets, 16 needle sizes in each one, and some brand new bamboo crochet hooks. I bought some of these for myself to try a while ago, and it's all I'm using now, so I hope that other people will like them as much.




I also ordered some little craft shears (I think that's probably a better way to describe them than scissors) great for snipping off the ends of threads. They come in a choice of colours too, red, green and blue.

Busy busy busy

Well, the website has been up and running for a while now, and I'm quite pleased with it. I do need a bit more stock though, so I'm busy placing new orders for some things that should be available towards the end of the month/New Year.
I've got some lovely new organic merino baby wool on the way, and I've ordered some bamboo knitting needles and crochet hooks, so I'm going to be extending the range by quite a bit.
I've also been working on a couple of new free patterns to offer, just got to do a bit of double checking on this one, but hopefully the pattern for this lovely new wrap cardigan will be available in the next few weeks or so.
I'm really pleased with the way that this one has come out, and I think that I may have to make one for my little babe, better get cracking, because although he/she isn't due to put in an appearance until April, I've got a lot of other things that I want to try and make before then too.
I'm also hoping to make a few of my crochet shoes and knit some pairs of organic baby socks to sell on www.nzwools.co.uk too. I'm going to be busy for a while yet, I can see!