Fiber Prep

With Spring nearly here and weather conditions in Qinghai improving, I'm starting to prepare for my next visit to the Spinners at the end of April. I'm really excited. This weekend, I went through my copious stash of hand-dyed fiber and put together color combinations to ship out ahead of the trip.

I also pulled out all the un-dyed fiber stashed in various places around the house and studio. I made combo packs with different rovings, fleeces, mohair locks, and silk noil, weighed everything, and the dyeing has now commenced.

I'm experimenting with dyeing some local wool from Qinghai. The sheep out there are interesting critters. They're fine-boned and quite pretty animals, and they are dual-coated (they have a layer of long guard hairs plus a layer of shorter, downy fibers).

The weird part for me is how soft the wool is - I'm used to dealing with dual-coated fleeces where the guard hairs are itchy and nasty. In addition, the wool is taking dye really well and I'm getting nice rich colors.

I'll post some pictures of the dyed wool once all the boring colors are out of the way. I'm working on black, dark grey, and dark brown today, and it's not exactly photogenic. There's green and blue in my future, and I'll make sure to post pictures.