Shibori and Dyeing, Oh my!

And my, Oh My, did we have fun today!

This is a picture of the finished shibori project before beginning manipulation.

Here is Natalie working on placing the marbles.

Here is a close up of the marbles

that have been tied in place.

And here it is all ready to felt.

Stay tuned!

And here are some before and after pictures of our dye projects. This one is using Wilton cake dyes and Bolero II (a small mohair loop) and BFL sport weight. One interesting thing we learned. The food dyes do not always give you true color. I was aiming for black and rust. Hmm...good thing I like green and purple.

Bonnie used Dharma Fiber Reactive dyes. Colors are true, very concentrated and very vibrant.

Tierney also used the Dharma Dyes.

Very "outside the box" for Tierney.

These were dyed with a very diluted solution and left in the skein. Can't wait to see how they look when Bonnie knits with them. We think there will be some interesting color shading.

This is the bamboo/merino superwash using the Wilton dyes. I thought the bamboo would make the color paler but it didn't seem to affect the depth although, once again, I was going for a pale gold/pink/peach, which I didn't quite achieve!

This is the BFL ultra! using the Wilton dyes. This was the most fun because I didn't particularly try for anything specific. I used a much weaker solution, didn't mix the dyes too well which resulted in "spotty" colors and just used the up leftovers. I really like this one the best and am going to use it to knit the "Mermaid Gloves". Hope to start them tomorrow.

The upshot is that we had so much fun that we left the microwave downstairs because we want to continue to "play". So if you come in, hope you won't be too offended by the smell of wet sheep!!

See you soon,

Karen, Bonnie, Charlene, Tierney & Natalie