While on holiday in Scotland, my friend Sarah arranged for us to visit Lilith of Old Maiden Aunt at her dye studio. It was a wonderful day and we spent several hours dyeing up yarns. Ok, well I spent several hours and accidentally left my husband stranded at the train station. But he’d visited one of the nearby distilleries for some whisky tasting so he was content to wait on us – for the first couple hours… 🙂
Spaghetti yarn
First up, we soaked the yarn so that it would take the dye. The yarn in the bowl reminded me so much of spaghetti that I had to take a picture to share. Everyone I’ve showed this picture to says “that looks like spaghetti!”
Dyeing supplies
Lilith set us up with all of her dyes to play with. I spent a lot of time testing out color combinations on the different bases to see how the different fibers took up the dye. 🙂 I was quite chuffed when I was able to actually get the color I was aiming for to come out of my dye solution!
Sarah’s yarns
Sarah dyed up some yarn for a blanket and a sweater she had planned so her dyeing went much more quickly than mine, since she knew exactly what she wanted going into it. I couldn’t believe how quickly the hours flew by.
My sample skeins
I dyed up about 8 sample skeins. Then picked my favorites to dye into full skeins and a couple to dye into some Christmas gifts for friends. When I picked my favorite colors from the samples there was quite a lot of purple. I definitely seem to have a distinct color palette anymore: greens, oranges, browns, purples, yellows and reds but always erring to the purples. 🙂
All of my wool dyed at Old Maiden Aunt’s studio.
If you’re ever in West Kilbride I highly recommend swinging by Lilith’s shop to see what she has in store and if there is a dyeing workshop available, it’s well worth the money! 😀
