My main fiber activity for the past week has once again been dyeing suri alpaca. I start a pot of dye in the evening and heat it until I go to bed. Then I turn it back on in the morning and Pam turns it off for me once the color is exhausted.


Here you can see my week’s production in the six colors available in the Easter Egg dye kit I’m using. They’re vivid and when the’re spun, they’ll show a lot of good suri luster.

I’m still using the Easter Egg dye kits, but I’ve done some things differently this time around. The biggest difference is that I’m using washed and carded fiber rather than raw fiber. The second difference is that I’m making sure I cook the fiber an hour or so beyond dye exhaustion.

My normal procedure is to add a little soap to the dye pot as a surfactant. I found that steeping fiber in a hot, soapy, dye bath was much like soaking fiber in hot soapy water, so I got lazy and decided I could dye unwashed fiber. Sometimes it works. Other times the fiber doesn’t take up the dye very well. It’s a great way to produce certain effects – namely a mixture of dyed and natural colored fiber.

After being a little disappointed with the color intensity of my first batch of Easter Egg dye fiber, I remembered what my friend Tammy, told me about washing alpaca fiber prior to spinning. She says that she normally doesn’t wash alpaca fiber prior to spinning unless she plans on dyeing the fiber. She washes the fiber that she plans on dyeing so the fiber takes the dye better.

After thinking about this little tidbit, I decided to try working with washed fiber. I’m much better pleased with the color this time around.

Cooking the fiber longer after dye exhaustion helped – particularly with the blue or purple color. You may recall that in my April 3 entry, I had a lot of red bleed from what I thought was blue fiber when I washed it. I still had a lot of red color bleed from both the red/pink and blue/purple fiber, but not nearly so much. More of the dye stayed in the fiber and I lost less color on washing.

I’m pleased with these changes in my dyeing procedure.

The next step is to card the fiber – still waiting for a dry day – so I can spin it. I’m thinking of a variegated yarn in rainbow color – working around the color rainbow above. Of course, I may decide to simply offer the fiber in the Alpaca Merchant (our on-line store) as is.
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