Bonjour,
Just quickly wanted to share with you some pictures of a yarn I made. It is alpaca yarn, prepared using hand-cards and spun using the long-draw method. Eyeballing it, I think it’s about 10ply weight. In actuality it is a 2-ply yarn. I had planned to leave this yarn white, but it had too many discoloured bits (it was made from the waste fleece from a combed preparation). I mordanted it with alum and tartaric acid, then hand-painted it with blue and yellow food colouring, setting the colour by steaming it on the stove. I’m rather happy with it, and I like that the yellow and blue mixed together to make green as I had planned. I haven’t heard or read before of using alum to mordant yarn which will be dyed with food colouring, but I do think it helped the yarn soak up the dye. I shall knit something up with this in the next few days.
