I’ve been dyeing a ton of fiber lately!  I think it’s because the weather has been so cold, dyeing just seems like a way to make Crafty Soup.  🙂

I’m a big fan of our Bare Wool of the Andes fiber for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s really easy to spin because the Peruvian wool is a little grippy and lets you control it easily.  Next, it comes in 100g bundles which are the perfect size for the bobbins on my Kromski Polonaise – I know that one bundle will fill one bobbin perfectly.  Finally, it’s really inexpensive so I can mess around in the dye pot and try strange and/or challenging blends of colors without worrying about being out a pile of cash.

For this handspun project, I dyed up 4 100g bundles of fiber all in the same pot with Jacquard acid dyes.   Two of the bundles were close to the top of the pot and got a little darker in color than the two at the bottom of the pot, so I’m planning on spinning each one up on a separate bobbin and then plying the darker singles with the lighter singles in order to balance out the color. 

I don’t have a knitting project in mind yet, but Ravelry has an incredibly powerful search function that I love using.  I can plug in that I have X yards of Y weight in Z fiber and I’ll get search results tailored to my handspun, even though it’s my own personal one-of-a-kind yarn.  Magical!  I also like adding the “In my queue” filter so I only search patterns that I’ve previously been interested in making – it keeps the choices from getting too overwhelming (since I have 43 pages of queued projects!).