AAAAAAH….acid dyes. I finally tried them out and have to say, no more Wilton’s cake dyes for me! This was so much better, fewer hassles. The dyes didn’t break, they set properly, there will be no bleeding. I understand what quantities I need to use to get colors…all in one try. Hooray!

Now, learning how to achieve the colors I want will take some time. Case in point is the roving at left in the photo you see here (and yes, I use a ladder as my drying rack right now–the old rack broke and the ladder is just sitting there waiting for somebody to work on the back room, so I’m making it work for me). Anyhow, I thought I could make two layers of wool in my pyrex for the microwave method, and use red and blue dye with some overlap for a red-blue-purple tie die effect. Unfortunately I didn’t check the bottom layer, which didn’t get saturated enough, and I ended up with half nice, and half ‘patriotic’ colors on this piece of roving. Not my desired effect, but they’ll blend up fine on the drum carder. The reason for this is that the Wilton dyes always sank to the bottom of the dish and then wicked up into the wool during the heating process. The adid dyes bond so much faster that they didn’t ever make it down through the wool.

The orange and red I dyed on the stove top in my enamel dye pot. I LOVE this one! I made a dye of yellow and after the roving was saturated with the yellow, I gently applied bits of red here and there for a nice spotting effect, being careful not to stir the wool around until after it was set. I love it, love it…did I say that I love it! More adventures in dyeing are sure to follow!

I can’t wait to post about an adventure that I hope will work out, for a group of freestyle spinners–myself included–who met at Camp Pluckyfluff East last fall. I can’t say now, but I’ll be posting a link to one of our next group adventures very soon….it’s exciting, and I just hope it’ll work out. Sorry to hint and run….peace.