Spinning and Dyeing Tutorials

Note: All the recipes on this page are designed for animal fibres (wool/silk/alpaca/mohair etc) and acid dyes unless otherwise stated, and are not suitable for cellulose based fibres such as cotton/flax/linen.

All of the tutorials on this page were written by myself or my sister Tracy. Tracy's tutorials appear on knitting-and.com with her permission.

Dyeing

Drip Dyeing

Dyeing Spun Yarn Evenly

Hand Painting Using the Cold Padding Method from Ashford Handicrafts Including instructions for painting yarn, finished knitting, silk caps, roving and dyeing colour-change yarns!

How to Dye a Mottled Yarn: Doing it all wrong on purpose!

Overdyeing

Rainbow Dyeing the Ashford Way

Tie Dyeing Yarn

Fibre Preparation

Skirting Your Fleece

Washing Your Fleece Sarah's Way
Washing Your Fleece Tracy's Way

What to Avoid When Buying a Fleece

Preparing Silk Caps for Spinning

Sari Silk Waste

Spinning Hand Painted Rovings

Using Oddments Different ways to combine oddments of fibre to make usable amounts of yarn

Heathered Yarns Made With a Drum Carder

Heathered Yarns Made Without a Drum Carder

Self Striping Yarns (drum carder optional)

Speckled Multi-Fibre Batts

Variegated Yarns

Visual Colour Blending

Spinning

Handspun Yarns Photo Gallery

Heathered Yarns: The effect of spinning on multicolour roving

Plying a Perfectly Balanced Yarn

Spinning Beaded and Bobbled Novelty Yarns

Tips for Spinning Cat Hair Other Stuff :)

Basic Reconditioning of the Ashford Traditonal Spinning Wheel

Yarn Count
Find out what those mysterious numbers on cones of yarn really mean!