This weekend at Olympic Yarn & Fiber was particularly full of learning opportunities. To start the day, Lynn and I drove up to Aberdeen to visit with the woman who does the yarn dyeing for her. Valerie of Fiberplay has a small operation run out of the upstairs of her home that she was kind enough to let me tour and take many pictures of.
I learned that because she works primarily with protein (animal) fibers, she dyes with acid-based dyes. To do this, she adds citric acid to the dyes that she buys. Her dyes are synthetic, however, she is sure to make sure that the dye water runs clear (meaning all the dye has been absorbed) before disposing of it. Her process is as follows:
First, she adds the proper amount of dye to water in a crock pot. She then adds the fiber to the water and puts the heat on high for a few hours. After that, she puts the fiber in a steaming container and places it on top of a pot of boiling water in order to fix the dye to the fabric. After that she simply hangs the fiber to dry. She has a variety of methods that she employs to create variations and overdyes, but she only (understandably) explained the basics.
I am still not convinced that I like the idea of dying anything, especially when disposal isn’t regulated. But, it was nice to get a picture of how small business work to regulate their own sustainability in their art.
After visiting Fiberplay, we went back to the mill and worked on plying and skeining. I got to learn how to set up the spinning machine in order to ply two pieces of finished yarn together. The first thing that I learned was that to spin you set the spinner to a “Z” spin, meaning that it spins clockwise and to ply you set the spinner to an “S” spin, meaning it spins counter-clockwise. Other than knowing the settings of the spinner, there isn’t much work to be done other than watching to make sure that nothing breaks during the process.