I attempted a madder dye vat about a month ago, hoping a spell of warm weather would result in a good day for dyeing. The madder root went into warm water to soak about five days ahead of dye day. I mordanted the wool in preparation. A couple of fiber friends wanted to watch the process and we made arrangements. Alas, when the dye day arrived (a Sunday morning) a cool wind had arrived also. The madder did not come out as dark as I would like, although the fiber is easy to draft and spin. Depending on the plied result, I may re-dye the yarn skeins this summer.
In the meantime, I decided to organize and label my handspun and hand dyed yarn stash. It was spilling out into my studio work area. I have gifted some of the skeins in the past, but only selected ones that I thought someone might particularly like. So, I pulled everything off the shelves and out of the cabinet onto the floor.
I have some jewel colors. I have some bright colors. 
I have big skeins and small sample skeins. I have over 50, probably close to 60, skeins. Mostly wool, but some silk blends and some super wash with nylon. In all, representing a lot of spinning and dyeing. With a deep sigh, I plunged in to sort, measure, weigh, and label. The singles skein on the top left of the left photo was dyed with Kool-Aid. That was a fun project although it was difficult to find the unsweetened Kool-Aid mix.
These skeins do not include the fiber that I have dyed with natural plant dyes in the past few years. I have used up most of that on projects, with the exception of some really nice indigo yarn that I am saving for….something. I also have been dyeing a lot of green lately. More about that in the next blog post. Now that I have fixed the transition problem I am back to blogging here regularly.
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