Wool Fiber for Tail Spinning

I am going to have a go at tail spinning.   I have dyed about 300 grams of wool this lovely turquoise color and separated the best locks out of the fiber and now have to have a go.  Looking at various videos I think I use the fiber I rejected as not having good enough locks to make the base yarn and spin the locks in as I go.  Very difficult to know how much of each type of fiber I need but no doubt I will learn as I go.
I am trying a few new ideas and making use of my Spin-o-lution wheel.  The great thing about it is I can spin fine or really thick yarn without changing anything except the ratio 

Dying with Lichen 4

The bucket of Lobaria pulmonaria dyed all this wool which is probably 300 grams or more and would have done more as the dye bath was still dark brown.  I decided that everyone in the house,  including me,  had had enough of the smell of stale fish boiling.  The wool smells faintly of tea now that it is rinsed and dried

Dying with Lichen Stage 3

This is the first wool I dyed with the lichen soaked in urine.  The smell did not really improve and now it is more like the smell of boiling stale fish!!  This is skein of Wensleydale yarn about 100 grams and the colour is coffee brown.  Brown is a very difficult colour to photograph and it has come out a little pale on my monitor,  maybe that is because I took the photo in bright sunshine.  I now have the third lot of wool in the pot and so I reckon that the bucket of lichen that took me about 10 minutes to collect will have dyed over 500 grams of wool.  However the lichen may be fairly rare but as I have already said not around here.   It is a very large growing species and so is quick to collect. I have only gathered it off the ground or off dead trees  

Dying with Lichen 2

This is the lichen I have fermented with urine.  I then added soft water and boiled for several hours.   The whole house stinks!!!!!  I think this is a job for the camping stove and outside in the garden.  The end product is the sample in the small bowl.    Next job is to dye small yarn and maybe some Galway fleece. This lichen is very common in the woods here and is on the ground everywhere,  dye color for free?   I will wait until I see the end product