On Sunday night, Polycrafty and I started a few batches of acid-dyed roving. I had to leave before the dye baths cooled and were ready for rinsing, so she drained and rinsed the fibers for us both the following morning.
In each pot we had my roving, some curly tendril-y cutesies that
Polycrafty picked up at the
fiber show, as well as some Alpaca roving
(right?) that she had in her stash.
My fluff is on the left, with twisty-curlies in the middle and the Alpaca on the right. As you can see, the dye was picked up much more on my wool - this is because my fiber was on top and we poured dye from the top and sort of pushed it down with a spoon.
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| Blue-purple-green, my roving on the left. This is the 'top'. |
Another interesting detail is that the purple color actually separated out into the blue and red components. The picture above shows a dark blue splotch at 6 o'clock on my wool, but when the whole thing is turned over (below), you can see that this is dyed red in the same place. Something to do with improper mixing at the beginning and densities and maybe having an over-full pot.
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| Blue-purple-green, my roving on the left. This is the 'bottom.' |
And here is the red-yellow-orange. Again, mine is on the left. I love it!! It turned out so bright and sunshiny and happy. I sort of wish there was more orange, but I suspect that as I feel less timid about working with all of this material that I'll be happier to push things around and mix more.
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| Red-yellow-orange, my roving on the left. |
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Ok, that's it. Thanks to Polycrafty for the pics (taken by her and shared with me this morning).
Now, what to do with it.....?
it's summer, so a bikini obviously
ReplyDeleteMaybe a bikini -is- the way to go. I mean, as long as it's composed entirely of rectangles I should be able to make it with my current skill set. I think that's called a "bandeau"?
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for plunging into dye experiments with me! BTW, you can get your orange by spinning together some of the yellow fibers and some of the red. On close inspection you might see each strand color, but it will "read" as orange further away.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure ravelry has some patterns for bikinis if you want to go that route... but I worry that wool would be itchy in unfortunate places.
I had a blast!
ReplyDeleteAs for spinning the colors, I think that the slower and more carefully I go the best it will come out. I can imagine the extra effort involved to make the colors change in a predictable and smooth pattern that will make the final yarn look more polished. Though, there's something about wild n' crazy that is nice, too. We'll see how it turns out... nice tip for the orange. I guess the separated purple might be spun in from the blue and red, too, like you mentioned in email.
I'll look for free bikini patterns and get back to you... :)