My brain is scrambled and I'm all overexcited having just arrived home from a workshop at the Middle Essex Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers. It was run by Elizabeth Kendrick & Sarah Howard - it was so much fun.
The idea was to dye sock yarn in order to be able to knit two matching socks - being slow on the uptake I read the list of items and where it said 150gm of wool I took 150gm of roving instead of woollen sock yarn - ho hum!
The idea is to wind out a 40ft hank which is well tied, then to fill various jam jars with acid dyes, poke the yarn into the jars (which are sitting in a pan of simmering water) and then at the end of the dyeing process to re-stretch the hank as it was at the start, and divide it into two - both lots having the same dye repeats - obviously I didn't wind my roving into a hank, I just poked it into my jars, heated it, rinsed it and brought it home - I suspect that a similar repeat effect could be achieved this way as with the yarn, if one was careful enough (I wasn't).
Winding the yarn
Jars of dye ready to be filled with yarn
Yarn in jars dyeing
I'm quite excited about this method as the protection the jars offered from the bubbling water in the pan meant that the roving didn't felt at all (of course the fact that you can't prod and poke at it when it's tucked away in a jar might also help).
It occurred to me on the way home that this would be a good way to approach natural dyeing in order to get space dyed yarn/fibre with natural dyes. I am now plotting this as a project for the (hopefully near) future.
My dyed roving
