Wool – Sunrays Creations and Yarns

Posted on October 2, 2015 by mindovermanasa — Leave a comment

The Dye Project .. again!

my updates on the yarn I (finally) dyed.

1) Soaked the alpaca for 2.5-3hrs in vinegar to mordant
2) after letting it semi-dry, put it into cochineal dyebath:

3) after around 3 hrs, i moved into a steel vessel and put it top heat on gas (no micro here)

4) I let it cool in the vessel itself. and once cooled, washed it with running water and hung to dry:

5) So when it dried it looked like this:

6) and finally got it ready to store, to be used for some future project

What I learnt:

* It’s great fun!!!
* It is work.. do not take shortcuts, the results will also be a shortcut.
* if you use expired/really old dye, dont expect the original color to show up. be prepared for surprises
* Learn to live with the surprise 😉 (I’m NOT a pink person)

Posted on April 12, 2012April 12, 2012 by mindovermanasa — Leave a comment

The Yarn Bowl

This was made on a lazy afternoon, when I was fed up with knitting my shawl.. Well, not fed up per se, just majorly tired of doing it! 😉

So out came the superglue: Fevicol MR, stock of which had been left over by my carpenters. Followed by peices of knitting yarn left over from various projects.

The problem with this project is that I should have used embriodery thread instead of wool. And glue, instead of Fevicol. Fevicol is too stong a glue for this project. And the wool fibers kept getting stuck to my hand mnore than the bowl, which made a simple exercise a real pain.

So what I actually used was:

3 colors of woolen yarn of varying lengths
a salad bowl for shape
clingwrap for the bowl, to prevent glue from getting on the bowl.
1/2 cup of glue/fevicol
a lot of patience 😀

After covering the blow with clingwrap, I tried dunking short length of the yarn into the glue and then wrapping them in the bowl. This was a bad idea as the fibers were sticking more to my hand and less to the bowl. So strategy changed, and the glue was applied to the bowl, and i delicately laid out the wool over it.

My delicasy lost patience after half the bowl was completed. And the bowl was DONE! 😉

I kept it in the sun for a day to set properly. The next day i removed the salad bowl and left the yarn bowl to dry for 1 more day. Here i expected the clingwrap to come off. But since it stayed on, I just trimmed the edges to give the bowl a neater look.

It is now my ‘water-proof’ trinkets bowl! 😀

Posted on February 27, 2012February 29, 2012 by mindovermanasa — Leave a comment

Woollen Sweater

This is my first attempt to make a sweater in about 18 yrs. The shaping wasn’t great, and that’s why its featured folded. But the design was great. And it sure feels comfortable!