Smoky Mountain Colors

Friday, November 22, 2013

Dorset Batt, The Process I've Been Wanting To Share

A few months ago, Smoky Mountain Colors met a wonderful local woman who raises Dorset Sheep. We obtains one of her cleaned and processed batts and I couldn't wait to start spinning it. Here is a photo of what the batt looked like after I divided down to 4oz bundles.


As you can see it has a beautiful color, it's clean and a lot can be spun from 4oz. I've found it be airy and a little stretchy (which is fantastic for nice warm socks). Now I have to be honest and say that almost everything I spin has some silk or bamboo, or something in it to made it super soft. This is one of the few things that I have spun straight up, not blended. So with that said, I feel comfortable saying that it's a little softer that Lamb's Pride wool. If you have never used Lamb's Pride I guess it's comparable to Cascade 220 and maybe Galway.

So here is the next photo. I spin a little on the thin side, mostly fingering to sport weight. I spun this so that I could knit some socks since everyone has been telling me what great socks this fiber makes. :-) There is about 400 yards, 2-ply.



So my next step is to dye see how this yarn handles dye. I have changed the dyes I use and this gave me an opportunity to try out my new "goodies." Needless to say I was pretty excited about both learning how the new dye worked and seeing how the Dorset took the color. Let me insert a little side story, when I first started dyeing I did a colorway that I loved but sold it. So I've been looking forward to dyeing it again, and this was my opportunity. There is nothing like bright reds and yellows blending into a clean crisp orange, then that fading and then adding a touch of green and lightening it up to a lime so it will the blend into the color pattern. So here are my results.

 
Two days ago I started the socks and will have photos for you when they are finished so you can see how they look.
 
 

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