A Dyeing Day

We devoted today to dyeing. Early this morning we began by mordanting a pound of yarn for future projects. We simmered the yarn for an hour in an alum mixture, and when dry it will be ready for more dyeing with the plant material we have drying from our dyer's garden.



Next, we moved on to our big task of the day, dyeing with Japanese Indigo or Dyer's Knotweed.
Using fresh leaves from our garden, we heated them in a huge make-shift double-boiler until the water reached 160 degrees. We then strained the leaves and added baking soda to the fluid to make it alkaline. Pouring the liquid back and forth from one container to another allowed the indoxyl to react with the oxygen in the air and change into indigo.



We then added a reducing agent to convert the indigo into a yellowish form to prepare it for dyeing. We added wet yarn and soaked it for 30 minutes.



We gently lifted the yarn out of the dyebath.



And, 'like a miracle' the yarn turned from yellow to blue as it reacted with the oxygen in the air.



Pretty exciting stuff! We also boiled the leaves left over from the indigo production and dyed 4 ozs of mordanted yarn. It turned out very pretty, kind of a gold-khaki color. Will post pictures of it later.

Fall lamb shearing

We decided to shear the lambs a couple weeks earlier than last year with the hope that we will have longer spring fleeces from the keepers. Joe Viola, from Horse Shoe Run, did another super job shearing.

We are so pleased with the condition that the lambs are in. It is a little easier to score them with those heavy fleeces off. Shown below are twins, 712 and 713, both in great condition and for sale.





We are really pleased with this beautiful crop of fall lamb fleeces. Now on to the big job of skirting and processing. Look for raw fleece, washed and picked fleece, roving and other products on our two storefronts, eBay and Etsy links from our web-site.