Sunday, January 18, 2015

Dyed and Gone to Roving

Dying wool roving. 
So I still haven begun the sleeves on my sheep to sweater project sweater BUT since I got the spinning wheel in functioning order this week thanks to the awesome ladies at Yarn Underground's Knit Night I've now plied the yarn for sleeves and have the spinning bug. This time I yearn for color!!! My favorite way to get color into fiber is Kool-Aid. I stock up at Wal-Mart where it behooves them to carry all the colors. The least fancy the store demographic the more colors you're likely to find. The most key things for dying roving:
-acidity
-water
-heat
-not felting (no agitation, no drastic changes in temperature)
I arranged my roving (this is the fantastic roving I got from Uncle Doc!) in a 9x13 pan. Then fills it with enough water to cover the wool. I added 1 cup ish of white vinegar. Then I shook out Kool-Aid packets as seen above. I did not mix/stir/ anything the Kool-Aid. Just sprinkled on top. 
Then popped it in the oven. I turned it on to 400 degrees. When I came back it I was gently boiling I added some more water (tap hot) as some had in fact evaporated out and turned down the oven to 300*. When I could gently push the yarn down with a potato masher and see that the water above the yarn was clear I knew we were done. If I was a patient person I would have waited for the water to cool and pull the roving out onto a towel and then rolled the towel to press the roving dry. Alas, I am not patient. I pulled the roving out with tongs, may have burnt myself and may have made a giant water mess. But isn't it cool? And let me tell you how fantastic it smells! And how great our apartment smelled when dying it!!
Mmmmm can't wait to spin this! And dye more!!