Okay, so my Mum is allergic to wool, therefore anything I knit for her needs to take this into account. With spinning currently getting a lot more of my time than knitting, I decided that for her birthday/Mothers Day she should have some handspun that she could knit into something nice.

So, I called Wingham's, put in an order and as if by magic, some bamboo arrived. The next task was to dye it. All the dyes I have previously worked with are Jacquard acid dyes, which I've become very comfortable with. I know how much vinegar they need, what oven temperature, how long they need to be baked for and I love the fact that you get a good idea of the colour as it 'strikes' pretty much as soon as it hits the fibre. The problem is that as bamboo is a plant fibre, it needs a different type of dye.

I Googled around, searched on Ravelry, and took a combination of information to come up with a dyeing plan. Having soaked the fibre in washing soda, I added the Procion dye and watched as it appeared to make absolutely no difference whatsoever, apart from the water being a bit blue. Okay, no need to panic. These dyes just take longer to strike. I'm sure it'll be fine if I just leave it for a while.

A couple of hours later I returned to the dye pan, lifted a bit of bamboo out and saw it was... Still white. Damn. At this point I did lose my nerve slightly and added more washing soda and more dye before going to bed.

The next morning I was pleasantly surprised, indeed very relieved to find a nice light aqua fibre waiting for me. So I rinsed it a few times and hung it up to dry. When I came back from work I found this.

Oh. Nice. I thought 'that looks like it's going to be a soft, squishy joy to spin. Well, it's okay, as long as I can figure out what went wrong I've still got enough to do 200g of two-ply'.

As it turned out, I didn't have to. As horrid as it looked, as soon as I started drafting it, it softened beautifully and it spins really nicely.



I've just finished spinning the first 100g bobbin, but I'm still debating whether to go for two or three ply. Answers on a postcard, please!