Damn Gary for pointing out what this colourway ended up looking like :P

This yarn was dyed using fresh cochineal beetles (commonly used to make red dyes for food) that Panda and I scraped off a prickly-pear bush. It was an epic Saturday-afternoon adventure! They look like marshmallow fluff clinging to a cactus. I used the last method described in this Knitty article, thankfully managing not to destroy the kitchen in the process. In the end I had to add some extra food colouring that I had lying around because we didn’t get enough beetles; I threw in the rest of the red that I had, and for the final few go-rounds I chucked some blue in so it would go from red to purple. Result: Bacon! Ah well…hopefully it will look nice knitted-up. Now to think of the perfect pattern :)