Yarn Invasion of the Alien Planet

Here is my submission to The Yarn Museum in the "Surreal" section. Thanks to Adrian of helloyarn for photographing tips.

Valentine à la française

This is the day I get to open my exchange gift from Le Forum de Filage. My marraine (godmother) is Carine from Belgium whom I met in France last September. As you will see in the following photos, Carine put a lot of effort, care and stuff in the package. The idea behind the exchange was to gift a filleul (godchild) one's handspun, an interpretation of the theme "le feu couve sous la glace" -- fire sits under ice, referring to Red Hot Day in the midst of Winter. The sender was also to add one's regional specialties and other goodies. The cream on top of my marvelous package was Carine's handspun: very finely spun and extremely balanced yarn only in the softest wool fiber. Merci, Carine!

Natasha Fialkov, you're my hero!

Armed with the dishwasher photo uploaded by Tala of Black Cat and Handspun, I followed the 5000-word instructions of my fellow Camp Pluckyfluff alumna, Natasha, for dishwasher dyeing.


Here is my succinct rendition:

Fill the zipper freezer bag with water, soak in the fiber, squish until the fiber looks transparent. Squeeze and pour out the water. Mix the dye and vinegar, pour into the bag. Press to distribute the dye. Zip to just 1/4 inch to the end. Place in the dishwasher and run the longest and hottest cycle (no scrub) and heat dry.

I shared this idea with the Euro spinners on the French Tricofolk forum and they thought the wool would felt. So, I tried it myself using normal cycle, no pot and pan scrub. While I was able to card 100 percent of the fiber -- which meant it didn't felt -- I did have to open up the fibers at the end. Next time I will just run it on water miser just to see if there's a difference.

Here are the rovings after dyeing in the dishwasher and drying in the washing machine.

The fibers did need some opening up.

The fiber, 100 percent carded up. No felting.

Into the drumcard slicker (if you want one go talk to Heidi of The Artful Ewe)...

Unrolled...

Very nice...

Up close.

Fibers Before and After

Here are photos of the yarns spun from the rovings in the previous post.

Before...

...After


Before...

...After