Dyeing - Playing with Color

Hi all, this past week the dyeing bug bit again, so as you know I've been trying to use up my yarn stash and that goes the same for my spinning stash. So I had a browse through one of my tubs and came across some Merino/Possum roving, Corriedale roving, Wensleydale/Teeswater roving and Jacob roving, so I dragged out my dyes and got to work!

Here's one of the rovings soaking in some vinegar and water while I got everything organised.

When I'm ready to dye, I just line up the roving as best I can on one of my tub lids, this makes it easy to catch the runoff dye and squeeze it back into the roving. The dye just washes straight off the plastic too.

Then I just pour on the dyes, this time I was playing around with pouring on little areas of color, sort of like spots. Then I very gently squeeze it out and pop it into an oven bag and into the pot to steam until the water in the water/dye in the bag runs clear.

This first batch is the Corriedale roving and on the right half of the picture I just dabbed patches of green, blue, red and yellow onto the roving to see what would happen. As you can see most of the yellow has been drowned out by the other colors but I'm very pleased with the results, it should make an interesting yarn.

On the left half of the picture I dabbed blue and green onto that section of the roving.

This is also the Corriedale roving and I made up some purple from pink and blue, and poured it in sections over the roving, I love the way it's come out in lighter and darker sections. It's much more purple-y than the picture shows too.

This one is the Merino/Possum roving, this is the only one out of all of these that I used Landscape dyes, all the others are dyed with food dyes. I used a deep dark purple and sort of a gold color and made striped areas. Apparently Possum is supposedly VERY warm....

And lastly here's the rest of the rovings, on the very right hand side are the purple Wensleydale/Teeswater and the blue Jacob, they were just small samples I got in a sample pack, so I was testing out how they'd dye.

The pink and blue is...... I've forgotten without looking it up which I'm not doing now as it's nearly 1am and way past bedtime.

So as you can see I had a lovely time playing around with color and making a huge mess! And yes, I walked around with green and blue hands for a couple of days again, because I kept forgetting to put my gloves on!

Seeya xxx