Prepping for two craft fairs – dyeing

A few weeks ago, I applied for two Spring Markets here in London, and got accepted for both. After the good news came the panic: I needed to build stock! I sort of went on a preparation frenzy.

I needed to order yarn and fibre, but for a while I had analysis paralysis – what weight of yarn should I order? And type of wool? How about top, what do I want? Regular, superwash, and how much of each? The pain, the pain (well, I thought this was the painful bit until I received the bill).

After settling for a few different bases and weights, it was time to make some dyestock and start the fun. Here you can see one colourway being prepared, where blue was one of the colours. The knots you see are to prevent the yarn from taking in all the colour in those parts, and the stick prevents the rest of it from being submerged.

Here’s another colourway in preparation. The reds are richer in person, but my iPad wasn’t collaborating.

These oranges with red undertones came out very vivid, but again my iPad decided to be a jerk.

I’ve also been dyeing fibre. This top is for my personal stash, as I was experimenting with some colours to see how they behaved (the answer: not too well considering what I was looking for in some parts, but that’s how we learn).

Finally, here’s the top I’ve dyed so far in the middle, plus the yarn I’ve spun on the back, and some naturally grey boucle yarn that I overdyed. The odd braid you partially see on the bottom right is a commercially dyed fibre that was quite disappointing, so I’m going to try to improve it by adding some of my colours on the drum carder. More on that on another post.

 This is just the dyeing part of the preparation, I still have soaps to wet felt and sculptures to needle felt. Hello, anxiety!

Do you, or have you sold at craft fairs? Or are you a regular attendant of such events? What do you look for? Share your experiences in the comments section, I’d love to read about it.