A Day to Dye

We use many different techniques for dyeing. It mostly depends on what we are doing the dyeing for. I took some pictures one day while I was dyeing some locks. 

First I picked the colors. For this day I was using primary colors. Red, Yellow, Blue.

Soaking the locks in hot vinegar water. I let them soak for about 20mins. 

I sprinkled the dye onto the locks and then added more locks. I don't normally add more locks, but I had put to much water in and needed the locks to sop it up. 

Locks in the process of dyeing. 

Before the blue and red took over the yellow. 

rinsing.

a wider shot of the rinsing. 

For dyeing we use acid dyes. Acid dyes need an acid to strike ( take up). We use vinegar as our acid. Depending on the technique that we are using I will either soak in vinegar water or wait until we've added the dye to add the vinegar. All of our wool sits in the dye bath until the water has cooled and then goes through rinse cycles until the dye doesn't bleed.

I hope to be posting about some of the other ways that we dye.

Wool Mill Road Trip

This past week we decided to take a trip to Zeilinger's Wool Mill. We have been sending our wool to them for nearly 10yrs to be processed into rovings. This is the first time that we have actually taken wool up there ourselves. We generally send it with another family or drop it off at wool shows.

We left on Wednesday night and got there late. Went into Zeilinger's first thing in the morning. They did our wool intake. That wasn't much different than any other time dropping off at a show. After we were done with the wool intake.

After our intake we took a quick tour of the facilities. We got to see the combing machine, roving machine, and the picker. That was just in one building. When we went to the next building we saw where they wash the wool. Then we got to see the machine that makes batts. They were working on an alpaca batt when we came in. In the upstairs of that building is where they make the socks.

All in all we had a good time. I can't wait to see the rovings and batts that we get back. It is a never ending circle though and we have started washing and picking for the next batch to go out.

The batting machine

A side picture of it

A top view

fleeces drying