Sunday, January 20, 2008

Forays With the Dye Pot

So, do you all remember my dilemma with the bobbins of Goblin Eyes?

Do I want to ply the two bobbins together? Do I want to Navajo ply? Do I want to ply from a ball? So what do I decide to do? I always hem and haw, do I want to spin the fiber then dye or dye and spin the fiber?? See all this procrastinating going on? And the bobbins are still not plyed! lol,

All rightly then, I decided to dye up some roving dying yesterday! I think, that a really deep purple would look fabulous with Goblin and, well, I have lots of Romney roving (I love Melissa from Skylines Farms) so I will dye up roving! This roving from a ewe named Peggy Sue in the following experiment.

One messy kitchen counter! Note the note pad so I can recreate this again, although I'm not sure this is exactly what I was going for! Here is one dyepot with 8 oz of roving, at this point I am thrilled and thinking I got exactly what I had planned, well, not quite eggplant color, but a really deep purple anyway!

All right, so lets lift it out of the dyepot, after 30 minutes of simmering:

Well, %$#@^&*! What, what, what is this?? Fuchia and blue-purple?? Apparantly the dyes need to be pureed together or the dye paste needed further mixing or something I don't know what! This is quite a bummer I must say!

Here it is drying on the clothes rack:

I am planning to put it through the carder this morning before spinning to try to homogenize the colors a bit. It wasn't a total failure, I think it will go well with the Goblin Eyes, look here:

7 comments:

Vicki said...

It may not have been what you were going for, but your dyed roving is absolutely gorgeous!!! Happy Spinning!

Marmee said...

I think your color combination is gorgeous. When you spin that up it will be complimentary and to die for, pun intended!!

Ashley said...

Of course, you know that I love that roving! I would love to see you navajo ply that Goblin's Eye fiber. It would be beautiful as a 3 ply yarn! I can't wait to see some more of your dyeing :)

Melanie said...

Maybe not what you were planning (does that ever happne?) but it certainly is very pretty! I think that the fuschia will add depth to the colour, and it does go beautifully with Goblin Eyes.

Peggy said...

I love it. But I totally love cotton candy!!!! seriously, I think it is beautiful

weebug said...

i think that the roving turned out beautiful! the colours will be perfect with goblin eyes!

Donna B said...

I think it will be lovely! Maybe I should ply my remaining Goblin Eyes with somethin' when I get around to spinning it...