I recently dyed some Suri Alpaca in 4 different colours. I got 200g of fleece back in 2015 from a lady in Gloucestershire who keeps Alpacas and this came from a Suri Alpaca called Butterscotch. I washed it on arrival and was left with 162g of fleece to prepare for spinning.
I did nothing with this alpaca fleece until recently, when I decided to split it into 4 amounts and dye each amount a different colour.
Further to my previous three posts I have continued to dye the Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool and fibre selection that I have chosen and now that the third lot is dry I can get on with my fourth and final lot.
So, what I will be dyeing in each dye pot is:
150-155g of Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool that I hand combed myself
40g Suri Alpaca, this is some raw fleece from an alpaca called "Butterscotch"
25g of 14.5 micron Merino, which was from Day 23 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
25g of Mulberry Silk
12g of Tussah Silk Noil
12g of Trilobal Nylon
12g Milk Protein, which was from Day 19 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
I soaked all of the fibres in warm water with a splash of Synthropol added to the water to remove any "chemical finish" that may have been added to the fibres during production. This also removes any grease and dirt that may be left in the fleece.
I made up a dye bath of 1% dye depth made up of 67.5% River Blue and 22.5% Flame Red and 10% Midnight Black. What I weighed out was 1.86g of River Blue, 0.62g of Flame Red and 0.276g of Midnight Black. The dye didn't take so well on the two Silk lots, they are little bit patchy but they are OK.
Further to my previous two posts I have continued to dye the Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool and fibre selection that I have chosen and now that the first two lots are dry I can get on with my third.
So, what I will be dyeing in each dye pot is:
150-155g of Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool that I hand combed myself
40g Suri Alpaca, this is some raw fleece from an alpaca called "Butterscotch"
25g of 14.5 micron Merino, which was from Day 23 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
25g of Mulberry Silk
12g of Tussah Silk Noil
12g of Trilobal Nylon
12g Milk Protein, which was from Day 19 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
I soaked all of the fibres in warm water with a splash of Synthropol added to the water to remove any "chemical finish" that may have been added to the fibres during production. This also removes any grease and dirt that may be left in the fleece.
I made up a dye bath of 1% dye depth made up of 75% River Blue and 25% Amazon Green. What I weighed out was 2.07g of River Blue and 0.69g of Amazon Green. The dye didn't take so well on the two Silk lots, they are little bit patchy but they are OK.
Further to my post of earlier today I have also dyed a second batch of fibres the colour that I had intended to the first time around, before I weighed the dye out incorrectly.
So, what I will be dyeing in each dye pot is:
150-155g of Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool that I hand combed myself
40g Suri Alpaca, this is some raw fleece from an alpaca called "Butterscotch"
25g of 14.5 micron Merino, which was from Day 23 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
25g of Mulberry Silk
12g of Tussah Silk Noil
12g of Trilobal Nylon
12g Milk Protein, which was from Day 19 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
I soaked all of the fibres in warm water with a splash of Synthropol added to the water to remove any "chemical finish" that may have been added to the fibres during production. This also removes any grease and dirt that may be left in the fleece.
I made up a dye bath of 1% dye depth made up of 95% Sunshine Yellow, 2.5% River Blue and 2.5% Flame Red. What I weighed out was 2.62g of Sunshine Yellow and 0.138g each of River Blue and Flame Red. The dye didn't take so well on the two Silk lots or the Milk Protein, they are little bit patchy but they are OK.
Further to my post of a few days ago I have now decided what I am going to do with the combed Llandovery Whiteface Hill fibre. I decided to split the fibre into 4 lots of around 155g each and add the same fibres to each lot but in different colours so that I can dye the fibre an appropriate colour and make 4 yarns that are almost identical but just in different colours. The total amount of fibre in each lot will be enough to make 2 skeins of yarn and a nice amount to make a shawl.
I started out by sorting items from my ingredients cupboard into colour groups and then checking if I had at least 4 different colours of any given fibre. Where I didn't have the necessary 4 colours that fibre was eliminated from the piles. Next I had to decide which fibres in each colour group worked well together, such as which shades of blue out of all of the packets looked good together. I ended up with 5 piles of 4 small packets of fibres so I had to eliminate one colour group, which I did easily as the colours didn't work together as well as the other piles.
I also decided that I would take the opportunity to dye some of the currently undyed fibres in my stash at the same time so that these would go into my "ingredients cupboard" for use at a later date.
So, what I will be dyeing in each dye pot is:
150-155g of Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool that I hand combed myself
40g Suri Alpaca, this is some raw fleece from an alpaca called "Butterscotch"
25g of 14.5 micron Merino, which was from Day 23 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
25g of Mulberry Silk
12g of Tussah Silk Noil
12g of Trilobal Nylon
12g Milk Protein, which was from Day 19 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
I soaked all of the fibres in warm water with a splash of Synthropol added to the water to remove any "chemical finish" that may have been added to the fibres during production. This also removes any grease and dirt that may be left in the fleece.
I had intended my first batch to be dyed a kind of mustard yellow but I made a really stupid mistake when I was weighing the dye out and only realised once I added the fibres to the dye pot and saw the colour it all went. Whoops, but a happy mistake because the fibres have turned out almost the exact colour I had intended for my second batch.
What I had planned was 1% dye depth made up of 95% Sunshine Yellow, 2.5% River Blue and 2.5% Flame Red. What I should have weighed out was 2.62g of Sunshine Yellow and 0.138g each of River Blue and Flame Red. What I actually weighed out was the correct amount of Sunshine Yellow and then I messed up and weighed out 1.38g each of River Blue and Flame Red (10 times too much of each colour). The dye didn't take so well on the two Silk lots and in both cases they are kind of a peachy-coral colour along with what can only be described as grey and it looks like a pile of burnt rubbish.
This past year or so I've been working on spinning up older braids of fibre and preparing fleece that I have had for the longest time along with either dyeing fibres for my "ingredients cupboard" or using up items from my "ingredients cupboard" in blends. This particular fleece isn't old, I'd only had it just over a year but I had two pillowcases full of this fleece and there was a lot of kemp that was sticking out through the fabric of the pillowcase so it was making a bit of a mess as well as taking up a lot of space. I decided to comb this fleece to save on space. I did actually finish combing the first pillowcase full back in early December 2022 and this contained 583g of fleece and after 19 hours of combing, not in one session, I had 218g of nice soft fluff.
The second pillowcase full weighs 1,105g and has been sat across the room looking at me menacingly ever since. I finally started to tackle this monster job on Friday 8th September 2023 and I have worked at it all over the weekend and have now finally finished combing it, 5 days beginning on the 8th and finishing today, on the 12th September. It took just about 25 and a half hours to comb my way through it and I got 400g of fluff. So, this almost whole fleece that was left over from the Breeds Project started out at 1,688g and I have got 618g of soft fluff ready for spinning or dyeing and spinning and it has taken me 44 hours and 20 minutes of work to get to that. Overall though, including that what I used for the project, I got a total of 712g of fluff from 1,916g of kempy fleece and that is a yield of 37.16%.
I didn't take any additional photos, other than what I took last year when I spun some up for the British Breeds Project.
I can't remember where I got this recipe from but it's in my handwriting on a piece of A4 paper, no doubt scribbled down from the Internet somewhere. I like this recipe and I've made a number of these over the past couple of years. I've made another two cakes today. This is them before they went in the oven. The one on the right has sultanas in it and the one on the left doesn't because my youngest likes my apple cake but doesn't like sultanas. I made the mixture up without the sultanas and put half of it in a tin then added half of the amount of sultanas to the remaining mixture and put that in the other tin.
This recipe can be used to make one 8 inch round cake or two oblong cakes using a 1lb loaf tins
Ingredients:
340g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
225g margarine or butter
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
170g caster sugar
115g sultanas
450g cooking apples, finely chopped (weight is after being peeled and cored)
3 eggs
a little milk (optional)
a little demerara Sugar
Enjoy a slice of cake with a nice cup of tea.
I haven't taken a photo of today's baking but here is a photo from last September when I made the recipe twice, once for a round cake and once for two loaf type cakes.
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