Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Hand dyed roving






Ok, I dyed half of the roving this morning. I actually found directions here:http://gfwsheep.com/rov.inst/rov.inst.html I read them and then made a few changes. First off, I didn't dye as much as she did, and I only used 3 colors. I took the roving I was going to dye and divided it into 4 equal pieces, I'd say they were about 36 inches each.I wound them into bundles and soaked the wool for an hour in the sink. I didn't have any plastic wrap, I hardly ever buy the stuff, but I did have some plastic grocery bags, I cut them open and used them with the printed side down in case any of the ink they print with should happen to run.Before I started to dye, I boiled some water and then put it in a pan I use for oven dyeing, put a wire rack over it and put it in the oven at 250 degrees. I kind of had to lay the pieces of roving doubled up on the grocery bags. I then poured the dye on and squished it through with my hands. I pulled the sides of the plastic bag over the roving, rolled it up and put it in the oven to steam for about an hour. I turned the oven down to 150 degrees when I put the roving in. I used Cushings green, aqua green, and peacock blue, and I think the coloring looks nice. There are a few spots where there is no dye, but it should blend in and maybe give it a bit of a heathery look when I actually start to spin. I know there is a drop spindle floating around somewhere, and although I'm not really very good at it, I'm tempted to spin a bit with it once the roving is dry.

1 comment:

Melissa Gasparotto said...

That's such a great combination of colors! I'm sure it will make beautiful yarn. You could spin a really fine yarn and knit me some socks...