Dyeing Again and Greenman

Today was spent mostly dyeing up batches of fleece for projects and to sell at the festival next weekend. I did about 9 or so big batches using my two 6 qt pans and my 12 qt pot. I started in at 8AM and quit finally around 2:30. My kitchen looks like a rainbow herd of sheep exploded. I have 2 screens set up to dry the fleece on with a fan blowing on them and had another batch outside drying too. I finally got some good deep blues and purples, along with deep greens. These are always the hardest colors to get right and I had to double dye these to get them dark enough. I started with dark gray fleeces--Navajo-Churro, Jacob, and Shetland but still had to dye them twice to get them as dark as I needed. I also took time to wash a Lincoln fleece I must have missed in previous fleece washings, and I still have another one yet to do. These are the last of the Lincoln's I got from my friend Barb in Iowa.

This is the outside batch



After the sheep dyeing and lunch I debated on starting in on the carding I still have to do to have some bags of roving for both spinning and fleece hooking but I was too wiped out physically--maybe tomorrow on the carding. I did re-frame Greenman and had started doing some work on him yesterday and decided to work on him again to day. I'm almost through with the upper left side except for one leaf. I might even get him mostly done before the show at this rate. I have promised myself that I will get him done before the end of the year. I'm still blanking out on what to do with the border. I alternate between Celtic knots, or acorns and oak leaves, and also the different names of the Greenman.