Mama, What's for Dinner??

It's the cry I hear every day, shortly after lunch or coming in from school. "Wool children" I say, "Ah, wool again" they shout from the computer or Lego pile.
These days I am working on a project for a friend at the kids school. Enough yarn for a jumper and matching scarf. 800+ grams of spun wool. I've never done that much at one time. It's also not all the same colour, so stretch out the wood planks and plastic table cloth.

It makes me tired just thinking of the wool that has passed through my hands in the past few days. This is the second batch. The first turned out to be very pale pastel. Not what she ordered.

Best of all, I ran out of purple dye. No one sells purple dye in Ireland that is close to Cushing's Violet. What to do? Cheryl to the rescue with some Deep Purple Procion MX in a close colour. Mix that for the second batch. By this time my back is killing me and oh, did I say I have to steam them one at a time due to the size. Oh, yeah, put to much dye on and it started to tidal wave liquid as I rolled it. Mop, mop, mop, roll, mop, mop, roll. All done. All steamed, all dried. Looks pretty good. Not as dark as I remember....

Spun it up today and guess what? I have another lovely pastel yarn!!! A wee bit darker, but still pastel. So I took 100 grams of roving and redyed it. It's drying now. We'll see tomorrow. It doesn't even look as good as the picture. If it doesn't work out with the next one, I'll be bagging it up and selling the dyed roving at the Knitting and Stitching Show in November.