Big day dyeing

I managed to sneak in a really big day of dyeing when we had a rare dry and warm day a week or so ago.  I dyed 60 skeins in one day.   I had 4 dye pots going most of the time.

Sock yarn

By the end of the day, I had my drying rack filled with yarn that had been dyed, rinsed, washed, rinsed, and in a vinegar bath for a final color set.

Lace and Royal Baby

The rack had to come inside to finish drying, some was still dripping, but I was thrilled with my accomplishment.

Now it is all re-skeined and looking very pretty.  All ready to go to out on the town!

Sock yarn

This is my sock yarn.  It is 95% alpaca, 5% nylon, 300 yards, $25 each.   It will still felt, so will make great felted mittens as well as socks or hats or scarves.  The nylon will give it more durability.  The skeins in the photo are stacked 2 deep except the 2 skeins are on the far right.

Royal Baby yarn

This is my super soft yarn, under 20 microns, royal baby 100% alpaca, 300 yards, $25 each.  You need to feel this to believe it!  Great for anything you want next to your skin!  Again, the skeins are 2 deep, so there is 600 yards of most colors.

Lace weight yarn

And lastly, this is my lace weight yarn, 100% alpaca, 300 yard skeins, $18.  Perfect for shawls or scarves.

A few skeins have already be spoken for, but the remainder will be going to Llama Magic and Fiber Friends festival on May 10 – 11 and then on to Shepherd’s Harvest on May 17 – 18.  I look forward to seeing all my fiber family at these events.

Advertisement

Gi-normous!

Yes, Gi-normous!  This box is gi-normous.

Really big box

That is how Rachel at Rach-Al-Paca described this box.  It is nearly full, too.

Full of yarn

This is all the white fiber that I brought to Rach-Al-Paca Fiber Processing back in September.  It is all spun into yarn.  LOTS OF YARN!

Super soft

I have over 11 pounds of this super soft fingering weight yarn.  It will be dyed into lovely colors for baby items or the softest of scarves and hats.

Lace weight

Lace, nine pounds of lace weight yarn.  It will make wonderful shawls and lacey drapey scarves.

Sport weight

Over 28 pounds of this sport weight yarn.  I had 5% nylon added to give socks extra strength.  I plan to knit sock blanks for the dyeing sock knitter!  It will still felt, so there are plans for felted mittens and felted hats.  And lots of dyed yarn for your future projects.  I’m going to be doing some inside-the-house dyeing real soon as spring is just too far away to wait!

A bit of dyeing

I like to keep a bit of un-dyed yarn on hand in case I need to make something special.  But the 2013 fiber I sent to Rach-Al-Paca should be spun into yarn and ready for pick up in another month or so.  Yesterday I wound the last of my 2012 yarn into big skeins and dyed it.  I wanted some nearly solid colors to knit into headbands.

Freshly dyed

This morning the big skeins are nearly dry.  Looks like they’ll need a little more time to dry before I can wind them into balls and knit.

In other news, I have only one craft show left for the year.  It is at Oak View Elementary in Maple Grove on Dec 7.   My alpaca wares are also available at Anoka Fiber Works in Coon Rapids and are always available in my online shop.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I want to wish everyone a wonderful day.  I’m so thankful for my family and my fiber friends and all my customers who support my very small business.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Dyeing, drying, winding, felting, knitting…..

It is crunch time!  Down to the last few days before Shepherd’s Harvest.  I’ll leave Friday morning to set up my booth.  I’ll stay near by and be at the festival Saturday and Sunday.  At the end, I’ll pack up my booth and come back Sunday night.  A lot of work, but one of my favorite weekends of the year.  I so look forward to seeing old friends, meeting new friends and absorbing all things fiber! 

On Monday I dyed yarn.  I had 8 skeins of lace weight.

Lace weight

Here is the lace, just out of the dye pots.

Lace in skeins

Each skein is 4 ounces of 100% alpaca lace weight, about 600 yards, $20.

Bulky yarn

The above are my 4 skeins of bulky, still wet.

Bulky in skeins

This is 100% alpaca, bulky weight, 6 oz skeins, $27 each.

Sport weight yarn

And this is the sport weight yarn I dyed.  It was so heavy, I had to add a brace to my fancy drying rod! 

Sport weight skeins

I have 16 new skeins of sport weight yarn – 100% alpaca, 6 oz, $27.

I just have to get labels on this yarn and it will be ready to be packed for the festival.   I want to get one more batch of 10 dryer balls felted today.  And I got a surprise delivery of black yarn for wrist warmers. So I hope to get a few knit.  

I hope to see you all at Shepherd’s Harvest!  It is such a fun weekend. Bring your Mom!  She’s sure to find the perfect Mother’s Day gift for you to buy her! 

 

Dyed and gone!

A while back, I spent some time dyeing more yarn.  This time it was mostly lace weight and bulky weight alpaca yarn, plus some sport weight for custom orders. 

Side one of rack

This is half the yarn on the drying rack.

Side two of the yarn

The lace is near the top and bulky near the bottom.  Then I got it all re-skeined, labeled and took it to the Upper Midwest Fall Fiber Festival.   And a bunch of it sold before I remembered that I forgot to take a picture to show you all the pretty skeins.

Remainder of bulky skeins

These are the bulky skeins I have left.  The first 4 are 6 oz skeins, the bright turquoise is 8 oz.  And I have one more cone of white to dye.  The bulky sells fast.  Most of this is now at the Anoka Fiber Co-op, so check it out there or let me know if I should grab one to save for you!

Mostly lace weight

I dyed a couple 6 oz sport-weight skeins of the pink/gray combo (on the left), which proved to be popular, as there is only one left.  The others are 4 oz skeins of lace weight. 

Please check out my craft show schedule and come shop local and handmade!

Back to dyeing!

I’ve been waiting for the chance to do some dyeing with the new colors I got a while back and the white yarn I had processed at Rach-Al-Paca’s mill. 

Step 1:  Skein up a whole lot of yarn:

Skeins to be dyed

Step 2:  Hang the wet yarn to drip until dyeing is done:

Wet yarn

Even though it was rather windy, I managed to keep my dye-pots hot and the colors appeared like magic!

Step 3: After washing, rinsing and rinsing again with a little vinegar, the water is spun from the yarn in the wash machine and the yarn is hung to dry:

Side one

My little drying rack is loaded.

Side two

 Both sides are full.

And more

 And this pipe is holding more skeins.

The last of the yarn

 The yarn on this pipe is the odd amounts for custom projects or to be knit into products.

Step 4:  After the yarn is dry, I re-skein it to make it look better:

Which is better?

Each pair of skeins above is the same color.  The one on the left has been re-wound into a neat skein with the multiple colors blended as they will look when knit into a project. I think they look better.  Do you?

Here’s half

 I have 28 new skeins of yarn for sale.  Those who visit during Farm Tour will have the first chance at this yarn! 

And the rest of the yarn

I have 2 and 3 of some of the color combos.  I even have a couple in camo and blaze for the knitters with hunters in their lives! 

I hope to see you all at Farm Tour – Sept 29 -30 – at our farm.

I’m back and ready to catch up

Shepherd’s Harvest was wonderful!  Perfect weather.  Lots of fiber-loving friends, both old and new.  It was great to re-aquaint with those I only see a few times a year.  And making new fibery friends is such great fun.  A special ‘thank-you’ to all my customers.  I appreciate more than words can say! 

Again, my booth was next to the booth of Twisted Suri Alpaca Ranch, so we could cover for each other when it got busy or we needed a break.

Mostly my side

Most of my things were on this side.

Center of booths

 We met in the middle.

Their side

And most of this things on this end were from Twisted Suri.

Rug space

And the rugs had their space together on the rug rack.  We have a pretty good system worked out for sharing our space.  It works for us. 

Since then I’ve returned some product to the Anoka Fiber Arts Co-op in the loft at Shepherd’s Choice in Anoka and spent a day working there.  Stop by to see the new things.

And today, I received 15 bags of super soft white fiber from Kinney Valley Alpacas.

Just waiting to become yarn

This will be sorted and cleaned as soon as I get a chance!  Then it will go to be spun into more yarn!  My yarn was a big hit at Shepherd’s Harvest and I’m anxious to more yarn to dye!

 

The Packing Challenge

I’ve been staging things to go to Shepherd’s Harvest for the last couple weeks.  But yesterday, I had to get serious and try to fit it all into our car. 

Product

I have 5 tote bins – the clear one in front is just yarn! The others have hats, mittens, socks, shawls and lots of other alpaca goodies for sale. The box in back has my rugs and place mats/stadium seats.  

Fleeces

I have 7 fleeces and 2 bags of roving, a box of felting kits, and a small tote bin of wrist warmers.

Display racks

 I’m also bringing my garment rack and my yarn rack.  Fortunately, these come apart.  By last night, all this was stuffed into the car!  With the front passenger seat reserved for my suitcase, backpack, knitting project bag and one rack I forgot about yesterday. 

Thanks to Twisted Suri Alpaca Ranch for bringing the grid-wall and tables for both our booths! 

Baby news – nothing yet, but my husband could experience his first alpaca birth without me this weekend.

Getting ready

The yarn I dyed is dry and rewound, labeled and priced.

Lace yarn

 

 

Sport weight

And 5 skeins of sport weight – 6 ounces, 100% alpaca, $27 each.  All will be going to Shepherd’s Harvest this weekend, along with all the other yarn and alpaca products I will have in my booth there.

A little baby news:  I thought Georgie was in labor this morning, but she proved me wrong.  I think both she and Spotsie are pretty close. They are over 11 months along and I may miss the births while away this weekend.

First day of dyeing this year

This afternoon, under our deck, three pots were cooking on the propane burners.

Cookin' something

It was the first day of May that it wasn’t raining and I jumped at the chance to do a little dyeing.  I had all my remaining white 100% alpaca yarn wound into skeins.  First the pots held red, yellow and blue.

Round one

Then red became purple, yellow became orange and blue became green.

Round two

And that finished my yarn.  Twelve skeins of lace, 4 oz each.  Five skeins of sport weight, 6 oz each.

All in a day's work

There is all my yarn.  It is drying in the breeze and should be ready to rewind into skeins tomorrow.  It is supposed to rain again!  So I can do ‘inside’ things tomorrow.  I sure hope this means all the rain will have moved on by the weekend.  I’ll have this yarn at Shepherd’s Harvest!  See you there.