In my travels I love to visit fibre farms and wool mills, from one such wool mill in Victoria (Australia) I bought off-white mill-ends which I used to make a rug in the natural colour. I still had quite a bit left over but wanted to to make something different. Using some dyes bought online from South Australia I thought this time I would have some fun. Dying an off-white wool makes for softer shades than dying pure white.

I haven’t any photos of the dying process. If I did it would show a small jam jar half full of dye of one colour and then later another colour, sitting amongst the dirty dishes in the kitchen or in the laundry amongst buckets of washing soaking.

I would just dye a small piece at a time, winding enough wool around my thumb and little finger making tiny skeins and then putting a small amount of dye into a small jar, enough to cover half of the wool and place the small skein and leave it for a while to soak up the dye. Then I poured over the top another colour and left it for a while longer (not very scientific but keep in mind I was experimenting and testing).

To make my dye sampler rug I started with a crocheted chain, along which I crocheted UK trebles (US dbl dbl) to do the 2nd row I would do a further chain of 2 or 3 and continue with the trebles and continue till it came to a reasonable square. I would use one sample mill end for each square and would then dye the next mill end and crochet it on in the same way. I would start a 2nd square by turning and crocheting along the side of the one I had just completed so as the pattern was now at right angles to the 1st. I continued in this manner till I felt it was big enough.

I thought I had finished - though now the cooler weather is here I have decided to lengthen it by a minimum of 3 rows of squares possibly four so that it wraps around my shoulders comfortably when sitting up in bed reading.

About the author: Janette loves all fibre related crafts - she lives in Australia and is retired spending her time alternating between her garden and her handcrafts.

If you would like to submit an article or tutorial please read the submission guidelines and email Kathreen at whipup[at]gmail.com

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 6:07 am and is filed under knitting+crochet+yarn. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.