Fiber Friday

It's raining here. Again. In fact, it's been raining here for approximately 47 gazillion days. In a row. And not just a little drizzle either - this is full on thunderstorm, lightening and hail type of rain*.

So...in order to brighten up this grey friday, here's a look at my first adventure in dyeing roving and then spinning it up.

I bought 8 oz of Corriedale roving from Woodland Woolworks a few months back, and spun up some of it. Then I decided to play around a little bit with the Wilton's and see what I could cook up. I mixed up a bunch of dye, tore of some hunks of roving (~1 oz each) and Boo and I had a lovely little while out on the back patio making a mess. Wrapped everything up in plastic wrap, threw it into the pot on a steamer and let it sit over boiling water for a bit. And this is what came out:

I'm pretty happy with how they came out - nice and bright and fun. The middle one especially makes me smile. The rovings got a little bit felted in the process, but not too badly, so I spun up the blue/purple/pink one into this:

1 oz, 82 yds, 11 wpi. It was lots of fun to see how the colors came together while I was plying. It's going to take quite a bit of experimentation to get to the point where I can take a roving and spin it so the colors come out the way I want them to (or even get to the point where I have an idea of how the colors will come out), but it is fun to do. I also wasn't prepared for how much the color varied in intensity between the roving and the yarn - the roving was much brighter! The next time I dye I'll try to leave some white sections and see how those come out. And I'll have to see how many different combinations I can get out of the Wiltons I've got in the pantry.


* southeast Texas has rainstorms like I've never seen anywhere else, i.e. dumping 6-8 inches of rain in 4 hours. And when the majority of the drainage is paved over or built on, that means only one thing, the thing that strikes fear into the heart of every homeowner - flooding! Good times I tell you.