Shepherdess Cowl - part 1 - dyeing experiments

It takes some discipline to abandon something that's not going so well. In the past I would have impatiently carried on regardless and finished up with something I knew could have been better.

But back a week or so, Mum and I decided to have a dyeing session, using some fleece given to her by a friend with a few sheep (washed and carded previously).

The strategy was to make up some basic colours, mix them to make new colours and just see what happened.

Helped along by a 'small' sherry. This was Christmas after all.

One lesson learned was to make sure that the dye soaks completely through the fibre (unless you want the white patches). Two of our experiments worked out particularly well. This blue / green and a black / red. These looked so lovely that I decided to make a cowl for the owner of the sheep.

We also spun these up during the holiday. Mum the greens and me the red. Here you can probably see the problem and the reason  for starting again.  The colours are wonderful but this fleece is particularly coarse and hairy. The result isn't something you'd want to wear next to your skin, so we're going to think of something different to do with this coarse yarn and I have a very happy story to tell in part 2 of this post...