For large amounts (in my case 5-7 skeins in a pan!) LARGE Saucepans with lids feature at the top of the list!! Saucepans need to be dedicated dyeing pans as you MUST NOT cook food in them after using them for dyeing!!
We also use large tray like pans for inside the oven and plastic bowls with clingfilm wrap for smaller batches of hand painted yarns, though these do not go in the oven or on the hob.
Spoons! I have a variety!! Wooden for stirring the dye pans, teaspoons for measuring out dry dye stuffs and dessert sized spoons for hand painting smaller batches of yarns.
A heat source! In our case it’s our wood fired Esse.
But for the clingfilm wrapped ones a microwave will fix the dyes too!!
And that is about it other than a huge collection of glass jars for mixing dyestuffs and colours in!!
Each week I am going to spotlight a yarn, pattern or something wooly!!
This week it is the turn of the new Hilltop DK yarn!
Just before Christmas the local Mill rang to say that the yarn from this year’s shearing was able to be collected! Sooooo Exciting!!!! So I hopped in the car and drove the twenty minutes to the mill to collect it ASAP!
This year we had two different lots spun up. I purchased the fleeces from my neighbours new yearling lamb flock, who are Balwen and Torddu, basically Welsh hill sheep. Hence the name of the blend! I was super excited to see what this blend of fleece had turned out like! It is GORGEOUS!!
Its is bouncy and super warm when knitted up. I have already knit up a hat for the farmer, so he can wear the sheep to feed the sheep and I don’t think it has left his head these past weeks with the snow and ice! I have also knitted up a pair of double knit socks for James in this yarn.
James reckons they are the warmest socks he has (and he has a number of pairs of supposedly thermal ones!!) They also look to be really hardwearing as boot socks. Something I most definitely look for when choosing yarn for socks for my husband as he is soooo hardwearing on socks. I have watched many a beautiful pair disintegrate into holes rather too rapidly for my liking. I am not talking of little darnable holes either!! A pair of size 10 socks is just over a skein of yarn, so why not grab two and do contrasting cuffs and toes??
The feel of the yarn is akin to that of the Icelandic wool and as such I don’t feel that it is suitable for neck wear for example, but as a sweater I might line the collar line, but it would do well as a good outdoor sweater for the winter months. Especially working outside in the cold. I have managed to dye some of the yarn up already and it is drinking the dye in beautifully making for really rich colours with plenty of depth.
I will be releasing the natural coloured yarn and two rich deep colourways on Friday this week!!!!! (did you see the sneak peek on Instagram??)
Into the wild via the Etsy store, so if you fancy grabbing a skein or two pop over to the shop on Friday! In the meantime there are plenty of gorgeous yarns to coo over and buy in the shop already!! Including our popular Rustic with Alpaca DK, Pure Llanwenog DK (even in a rainbow of miniskeins!! And as always our ever popular sock yarns!!
Well the yarn dried before the baby has decided to make an appearance!!! So the shop update is now live!!!! Two gorgeous spring colours and sparkles!!!!
Tyddyn Bryn 