Southern Cross Fibre

That little thought started me off on a journey…

One of the reasons I decided to learn how to spin was to be able to have a say in the yarn I knit with, instead of relying on commercial offerings only. When knitting the hat below, I was a little disappointed with the graduations of blue available to me.

So I’m going to try and produce a sequence of yarn that can be used for a new fair isle hat. I’m a relative newbie when in comes to spinning (about six months) and very recently started dyeing. This was my first attempt at mixing non-primary or secondary colours from the three primaries and was quite happy with the results.

The colours are as they came out of the dye-pot. I’ve deliberately not levelled the oranges and browns to increase the ‘heathery-ness’ factor. All of the blue/green set are quite level and even. The two oranges were dyed with the silver corriedale, the rest with the medium corriedale.

The shades of blue are a little too far apart for what I had in mind, so now my dyeing/spinning/knitting project has expanded to include blending on my drum carder…

To produce a graduating sequence of colour, I’m thinking something along the lines of:

• Blend dusty blue with undyed silver/white
• Use dusty blue as is
• Blend dusty blue with navy
• Use navy as is

Hopefully if I can make this blending project work, I’ll have a more even progression from light to dark and back again (and the yarn will have a heathered look which I love as well).

I think I’ve got most of what I want before I start blending, but I’ll need a ’stand-out’ colour to lift it, since the colours I have are quite subdued. Maybe a red, but don’t want it to blend too closely to the browns and oranges – perhaps a muted reddish-purple.

I’m still in two minds about the two oranges as well - too close together for my liking. Could possibly blend the lighter one with some undyed silver/gray to lighten it a bit and move it away from the orange/brown.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.