Before and After

I've been working on a few different projects, and I managed to finish one of them this past weekend. At least the spinning part. But, I had no idea what would happen when I tried to wash my spun up yarn. I purchased some hand-dyed Targhee roving in blues, greens, purples, and pinks. I spun up some singles with the intent to Navajo ply the singles and maintain the color pattern. The yarn is gorgeous (see left picture below).

I then attempted to wash the yarn. And wash the yarn, and wash the yarn. The dye kept coming out of the yarn. Sigh, I finally decided to resteam the yarn in my own pot and leave it to cool overnight. The good news, it only took one rinse before the dye was no longer coming out this time. The bad news, the reds and pinks were more muted now. Sigh, not exactly what I was hoping for, but the yarn is still lovely and I learned a big lesson. Next time I will try soaking the yarn overnight in Eucalan and see what happens. Check out both skeins below. The differences are subtle in the pictures, but more easiloy seen in person.




What am I planning on using the yarn for? Well, I have more left. I only spun up about 2 oz of the roving, so I have about 13 oz left. The plan for this skein is to make some fingerless gloves. The pattern I chose is one in "Yarns to Dye For" by Kathleen Taylor, a book borrowed from a friend and soon to be returned, so I should get cracking on them. I had some gauge problems and have modified the sizing of the gloves, but hopefully they will come out nice. We'll see in a week or so. The yarn is striping up beautifully though. The pale stripe is the green, more avocado green than shown in the image.



Okay, that's it from me. Robin will hopefully be posting more often now that she has the hang of it!