Yarns to Dye For!

One of the things I've been interested in for a while is dying. Come July, I'm going to get my chance to try my hand at it. Huw's friend Mirabel is a dyer, and uses natural plant dyes rather than chemical dyes. I think we'll be using indigo and maybe woad. One of them, I've heard, needs what is known to dyers as a "piss-bath" and I'm sure if that's true, it will all be so very charming.

Not.

I've been scouring my stash for any undyed yarns I might have. I've found quite a few, but these nine are the ones I think I'll bring with me to dye.

A few years ago, I signed up for a yarn CSA out of Martha's Vineyard, which has since relocated to Virginia as Juniper Moon Farm. At the end of the season, I got two skeins of Romney and four skeins of Corriedale.

These are the Romney skeins. The yarn is beautiful, but not particularly soft. I need to do some research about Romney yarn, and what it might be best used for.

These are the four skeins of Corriedale. I don't think I've ever knit with Corriedale before, so I'm looking forward to making something interesting with these once they're dyed.

In 2007 I visited a friend in Bellingham, WA, and on a trip to Orcas Island, we passed a sheep farm and I bought these two skeins. I wish I'd also bought the natural brown yarn, but I was limited in funds. These are from Coffelt's Farm from the island, and I've carried them with me a long time, and a long way. While I know these are wool, I'm not sure from which breed, and the website doesn't mention which breed they use for the wool, though there are Romney, Dorset, Coopworth, and Texal on the farm.

At a recent craft fair, I got this sport weight skein of alpaca yarn. It's from Sunny Knoll Farm in New Hampshire. I don't know much about this yarn, only that I've been told that alpaca accepts dye beautifully, and that it will look good when done.

I will continue to look through my stash to see if I have other undyed skeins of yarn. I know that I have a few skeins of Cascade Epiphany, a discontinued line, in a mustard yellow. Mirabel tells me that this can be overdyed, and if I can find it, I'll bring it with me. I only bought it because the yarn had been discontinued and I knew that when my LYS was soldout, it would be out of reach forever.