Dyeing for Wool Week 2014

I have dyed this wool to knit my hat for Shetland wool week, you can see a picture of the seaweed that has been the inspiration for this – taken on Skaw the most northerly beach of Unst –the most northerly beach on Shetland. I have also included a picture of the hat that I knitted as a sample this was so that I could work out how much wool I would need in each colour!

All the yarn for the real hat was hand spun. I intended that it was all going to come from the fleece that I hand picked from Jamieson and Smith on my visit to Shetland in 2012. I think it was Ella that helped me on that Saturday afternoon in the fleece store! However to enable me to get the gold colour I had to cut a corner and use some of my early handspun Jacob yarn (the gold), but this brings back pleasant memories too so I am happy to include it.

The dyes I used for the hat were : cochineal, elder, heather, indigo, logwood, marjoram and silver weed. The yarn was mordanted with alum first and some yarns were over dyed whilst others were treated with modifiers to get the exact shades, well as exact as I could get.

More about the dyeing to follow !

If it doesn’t work out I can still wear the sample hat – that is either Jamieson and Smith’s best jumper weight yarn or some of my own handspun and hand dyed!

There are some pictures on my facebook page at www.facebook.com/janet.major