There might not be anything better than turning a really dirty fleece into a white fluffy cloud of fiber. It never crossed my mind when I became interested in spinning that I’d actually purchase raw fleece. That is until I met Maggie Casey. I learned to spin from her in her shop in Boulder and she loves using fleece so she teaches her students to use fleece as a fiber source. Of course I still learned to spin using roving and top and whatever other commercially prepared fiber is available, but getting your hands into actual fleece sure taught me a lot about the material I weave my tapestries with: wool.

It only takes one time of seeing that pile of often grubby, sticky fiber turn into a fluffy cloud of curls and crimp to get you hooked. Apparently Maggie knew this when she brought fleece to her spinning classes at Shuttles, Spindles, and Skeins.

I love dyeing my own yarn and fiber. In many areas of my life, I’m not the most precise person. I’m a bit sloppy and probably a little difficult to live with sometimes. But when it comes to dyeing my tapestry yarns or fiber for spinning, I love using measurement and a little math to create custom colors.

I have a new online class this summer all about dyeing with acid wool dyes. If you’ve ever wanted to dye your own yarns, create unique palettes, or just get colors that commercial yarn lines don’t contain, dyeing the yarn yourself is the way to go.

Simple Procedures. Reliable Results.

In my blog post a couple weeks ago, I talked about how I learned to dye my own tapestry yarn and how dyeing the yarn and learning to weave tapestry went hand in hand. I enjoy dyeing my own yarn so much. And I’ve branched out into making variegated yarns for tapestry and knitting, painting roving for spinning, and dyeing fleece that I blend as I spin.

When I first started learning how to be a tapestry weaver, I took a semester-long college class about dyeing protein fibers. I never questioned that there was any other way to get the colors I wanted for tapestry weaving. In the weaving curriculum we were using a commercially dyed yarn and only had about 20 colors available to us, most of which were not ones I wanted. I was so excited to learn how to dye my own yarn.