Pink Alpaca

Here are some of the colours I have been natural dyeing this week. The yarn is from white alpaca that I spun. I washed the fiber several times before I spun it and washed again afterwards. Then I simmered it in an alum and cream of tartar mordant bath. This helps the dye adhere to the fiber. The yarn pictured (top left) was dyed with madder. The lovely green came from goldenrod with an indigo overdye. I extracted the goldenrod in the fall, and stored the dye in plastic milk jugs. The pink is from cochineal. There is purple someplace too, from overdyeing the pink with blue. After the yarns dry I will put them back through the spinning wheel to ply them together to make unusual multi colour yarns.

A special thank you to the lovely Lucy Lane who, through her kind words, has encouraged me to perservere with my hat. It is looking better. More to come on that next week! In the meantime I made two more alpaca felt hats but broke my plastic bucket while doing the last one. That is the end of hats until I can find another form to work on. The two new ones are much thicker, sturdier and 'hat like'. Now the real fun begins, decorating them!