Summersoups

Here's the result of some dyeing I did during the summer at my old job:

The three on the left are all dyed with violet lupin flowers. The yellow ones are dyed with onion and the red ones with a mixture of cochineal and madder. The striped one used to be a yarn in the french colours bleu-blanche-rouge, but I think it looks much, much better this way! Aluna was used for all of these soups.

There's also a small apricot- or salmon-coloured ball of yarn in the front. That's a silk-alpaca yarn dyed with japanese safflower. It's used for dying silk and gives both yellow and pink shades. If you're interested to know more about how it worked out for us, take a look at this blog kept by one of my old colleagues. There's also a bit more information about the lupins.

Here's another thing I learned this past summer:

I spun my first skeins of yarn! And everything is made from scratch. The sheep is called Elviira (in the middle of the picture below, picture by Espoon kaupunginmuseo) and I helped shearing here, then I carded the wool by hand and finally spun it into yarn. Can't wait to start knitting something out of it!