Indigo for the Holidays

During a very brief warm spell early this week, I decided to do a little more indigo dyeing.  I put some cotton fabric, wool top, wool roving, and handspun cotton yarn in to soak on the first warm day. 

Early on the second warm day, just before Christmas, I got the dye vat going.  Ah, the smell!  After letting the vat ripen for a few hours, I dyed the cotton first.  I had not dyed any of my handspun cotton yet with indigo, and I was thrilled with how rich the color came out.  This was Sally Fox's creamy-pink colored cotton which I purchased from her earlier this year (or was it last year?).  I dyed three one-yard pieces of fine cotton muslin fabric. 

Then I moved on to the wool.  I had 2 pounds of top and about 8 ounces of roving to dye. 

I experimented with some patterning on the cotton fabric; you can see some of the results on the fabric piece to the far left.  Funky!  The cotton yarn skeins are hanging at the edge of the photo.  One is brown; that is the natural colored buffalo cotton I also processed but did not dye (I scoured the cotton yarn first, of course).  I try to process handspun cotton yarn in batches of 3 to 5 bobbins at a time. 

I have started knitting a scarf for my husband with the spun Corriedale wool from the first dye last month.  I spun this in Old Town over the past few weeks.  I am very happy with how soft and easy to spin this fiber came out.