That's right: NOTHING.
Taking pictures my of my handspun made me want to dye some fibre - it's so much more interesting to spin dyed fibre; I can only spun undyed fibre for so long before the lack of colour gets me down. Even fibre that's just been dyed a solid colour gets boring pretty quickly. Picture time: (feel free to skip the words, they are about what colours I used, etc)
This one was originally solid magenta (the colour that's peeking through the purple). I added some blue in patches, which spread to cover most of the fibre. (I'm just working with food colouring, so I can't actually get this sort of purple usually, since I lack a magenta dye - the blue and yellow I have are actually reasonably close to process colours though, so I can get a good range at the other end of the colour wheel.) I've already spun half of this - I'm working on spinning thicker singles evenly. They are still pretty lumpy so far, but plying tends to help even things out. Anyway, I called this colour "Ketamine," because it reminded me of the TRIP! logo for ketamine.
This fibre was initially white. I dyed it a solid bright blue, then overdyed with orange. I wanted to tone down the blue a bit; I've mostly done really saturated colours before, and I wanted to get subtler. I also wanted to avoid any purple-y tones, so I used orange instead of red, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'm calling this colour "GlowWorms."
This one was also originally undyed white top - I did a first layer of pure (very bright) red, then overdyed with small amounts of green and purple to tone things down a bit. There's some really subtle variegation: this one is much more solid than the last two, and at first glance it looks solid. I'm going to knit something lacy with it when it's spun! This colour is called "Apple Decay."
These were bits of undyed handspun. I added green and orange into the same dyepot, which made the green a lot warmer (and evil-looking) and added the brown bits. This is called "Elf Poison" because if elves had poison this is the colour it would be (or else it would be colourless, and it would turn poisoned people this colour - both are good options).
This one is commercial wool I bought from ebay (it came from China). Originally, it was white with a grey ply; interestingly, the grey ply seems to have refused to take any dye, so I suspect the grey ply is actually acrylic and I was lied to about the fibre content. I do actually like how it looks, so it all works out. I used copious amounts of blue and purple (and maybe a bit of red? I can't remember.) that were reasonably well mixed. (Actually, I used waaaay too much dye, a lot of it got poured down the sink (it's ok, it's food colouring!) and a lot more got rinsed out of the yarn.) I called this color "Flecked Clematis" because I was slightly less grumpy than when I was thinking of names for the last two.
(Sidenote: I like picking ickier names when I'm grumpy - I stashed all my roommate's yarn in ravelry for her, and it's full of names like "Bruised Ankles" and "Drowned Face." She had to change some of the names apparently, because they were too upsetting. I guess the point of this sidenote is that if you want slightly gross colourway names, ask me to think of things when I'm grumpy.)
This one is my favourite from this batching of dyeing! I dumped some green in the pot, but I was getting tired by this point and I didn't really want to think about what else to add, so I just dumped a bunch of different colours in the pot without really paying attention. Which, of course, made these awesome dark bits! I have a lot more sympathy for certain yarn companies who don't have dyelots now - these were all dyed in the same pot, but each skein turned out quite differently. They will still be irritating to knit with, but now I understaaaaaaand. (And only have myself to get irritated at, which is much less satisfying.) The only problem with these is that the base yarn is quite scratchy; I'm going to try soaking them in conditioner, but I tried that with a knit shirt earlier today, and apparently my conditioner is extremely smelly, so I want to get some less smelly stuff first. Must find some nice base yarn(s)! That aren't expensive! Oh, and I called this one "Swamp by Night."
That's all the dyeing for today, but here is a picture of the sweater I finished recently:
Pattern: Ravelry : Designer's Site
PS - everything I dyed is some kind of wool. None of the things are for sale, but they aren't necessarily not for sale, so feel free to ask if you like.
