Cotton

For my birthday I received 2 pounds of undyed cotton fiber from my parents. Happy happy, joy joy!! I've been wanting to learn to spin cotton for a while now but never got around to actually purchasing any. I was wanting to do a grand project to work on from beginning to end for myself and found the knitted piece to make out of the cotton, Berroco's Dittio spring sweater. I don't like having all this fiber & yarn and not have something planned for it. My fiber & yarn stash is getting too big and I'm not going to be able to out wit James much longer when he starts pointing that little fact out to me. I told Carey about my gift and she promptly said "You're going to hate spinning it".

She's probably right, all fibers with a short fiber length are a pain in the neck to spin but I have some really nice Camel fiber on my wheel now that has a long fiber length that is proving to be a pain as well. Camel fiber is very, very soft and breaks easily while spinning. First mistake I made was to try a new technique on how the fiber is drafted. Spinning from the fold is where I basically take a short length of fiber, fold it over a finger and draft the fiber out from the middle instead of an end. All the length isn't helping one bit and has taken some trial and error while spinning this and James has learned a few new words while sitting next to me on the couch.

The new spinning technique wasn't the only new idea I had to try out as well. I've never dyed cotton before and it takes a bit of a different approach than the basic wool I've done. Since cotton is a plant based fiber, you need to dye with heat and usually something that will cause the dye to set. I had gotten a little dye kit from the Yarn Barn in Lawrence, Ks. that had everything; activator powder, six basic colors and a small bottle of Synthrapol. When I read the instructions it said to do in a "Well Ventilated Area", since I missed the opportunity to dye this fiber outside because of the winter weather, I was going to need something else to use but what? A quick internet search later and I was on the Rit Dye homepage. Rit dye is easy to use, comes in large assortment of colors and doesn't need a "well ventilated area" to work with.

(Notice the large plastic bag over the white countertop....I really hate the white countertops that came with the house)


Quick soak and then...


Rinse

At this point the 2 pounds of wet cotton fiber looked like bad bread dough that was heavy and dripped water everywhere when lifting into the pot for dying. I used 3 different colors (navy blue, royal blue and tan) to get the overall affect of different shades of dark blues, blue-grays with spots of a dark gold/brown mixed in. I used the condiment containers first filled with the royal blue and tan in them and started squirting the colors on the fiber. Then I poured the navy blue over the fiber and mixed it in by hands. I should mention that even though the Rit dye is easy to use, it still suggested on dark colors to add salt to help the fiber take the color and to use a longer cook time.

I kept fiber at a simmer for about 15 minutes before rinsing and rinsing...it took several rinse cycles for this cotton fiber to stop bleeding. I need to invest in a metal steamer basket like my friend Carey uses for her dye projects. It would have kept the fiber off the bottom of the stock pot and not burn at the bottom of the pot but no biggie, I only use this pot for dying projects anyway.

I think my husband would prefer for me to find a better place to dry my fiber out but our bathroom shower curtain rod is currently the best place for it. After drying I thought the fiber looked a lot like blue dreadlocks, I grabbed a handful and walked out into the living room with them on my head. Bailey giggled with glee while James rolled his eyes, at least someone was amused with my antics. I named the fiber Blue Dreads instead of the suggestion of Rastafari Cookie Monster from James.

Here is the 2 pounds of cotton fiber named "Blue Dreads" waiting for me to start spinning it. At first I thought I was going to have a ton of hand carding to do but when winding it up into fiber balls the fiber was coming apart quite easily and no carding should be needed. I will still need to heat set this before I do a final washing but I've decided to do that after the garment is knitted up and use my dryer for that.