In which I create gold

I'm just a woolly alchemist!

It's been hectic here the last week or so and I've been thinking of blogging but just haven't had the opportunity - for one thing, I've been so tired this week and for another I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here has started again (yay!) and this is my one bit of trashy telly. Three weeks of silliness a year is all I ask! Ah, happy sigh..

But prior to that I did one more batch of dyeing. And isn't it glorious? It just makes me smile whenever I look at it!

This was my second dyeing attempt with onion skins (last attempt blogged here). I'd been saving both brown onion skins and red onion skins for weeks so had loads of them. I stuffed as many brown onion skins as I could into my dye-pan then simmered for an hour and let cool for an hour or so. Then I simmered the yarn (alum-mordanted 4-ply blue-faced leicester) for an hour and let it cool again - and it just shlurped up the dye so satisfyingly. Look, that's it in the pan!

Then I bunged another skein in what was left of the dye but as what was left appeared to be very little I decided to chuck in the red onion skins too. I had no idea what they'd do - one book I'd read suggested that red onion skins yield yellow too (there apparently being no rhyme nor reason as to what colour you get - well, obviously there is rhyme and reason in a chemistry sense but that's a closed book to me), but I'm rapidly learning that there are so many variables in dyeing that it's really a case of wait and see! And this is what I got, a really gorgeous rich brown.

And here they are together.

That's the last of my dyeing fun for a while - I'm out of undyed yarn to work from for the time being so guess what's on my Christmas list! - so I'm pleased to be ending the year on a dyeing high! I now have a whole bagful of yarn dyed by me and just waiting to be turned into balls and knitted up, or maybe even crocheted.