a splash of colour

A couple of weeks ago I was trawling round the charity shops looking mainly for DPNs as I'm always losing one and knit with 5 at a time when they generally come in packs of 4.

After picking up a couple of packets in one of the shops I spotted a slow cooker for £6.00, bargain for what I need it for. The assistant was friendly and asked what I was planning to cook and was rather surprised by the reply that I was going to use it to dye yarn.

So here it is, my Marks and Spencers slow cooker.

I've already put it to good use experimenting with some of my yarn. I had some concerns that there may be a problem with my dyes being so old but all seem ok so far. Previously I have set dyes using my steamer, ok with fleece where the variation blends in when spinning. As the fleece/yarn sits in the steamer there is a tendency for the dye to sink and pool at the bottom.

This is the Shetland, I was surprised how strong the colours were with only a very small amount of dye.

In fact the colours are slightly brighter in real life.

I then tried dyeing some grey ryland (blue) and some light grey Norfolk/Suffolk cross...

Personally I like these muted colours better. This possibly shows the variation more... I feel a hat coming on :-)

I hope you all have great weekend, speak soon :-)  x