Wound Up

That's 4-ply wool on a cone. I love the way it looks when it's neatly wound like that. Also string:

A new ball of string is a thing of beauty.

The 4-ply wool on the cone was about to be un-wound into a skein, with help from a small cat of course.

I do the skeins on the legs of an upturned chair and the small cat frequently finds this too hard to resist. She's sitting on the underside of the seat there if you can't figure out what you're looking at.  But eventually, with the cat untangled,..

a 54g skein of 4ply waiting to be mordanted (alum/cream of tartar) ,

 .. and finally immersed in a cold black bean dye.  This time I added a bit of bicarb to the soaking beans because that's what somebody on Ravelry had done, and I wanted to see if it made any difference to the colour - it didn't I don't think. I've put the last bean-dyed wool somewhere safe  - by which I mean I have no idea where it is. 

What is different this time is that the bean solution did smell (it didn't last time), not terrible but pungent and distinct, and also you can see in the picture that the dye bath was a bit frothy too.

 And the end result - another nice blue. I dipped one end into a soda crystal solution to see if that affected the colour and it did. Slightly. It's a little greener and a little paler, but not enough to show up in the photos, which is slightly frustrating.

 And now it's in the process of getting would up into a ball. Got a bit tangled there. As usual!