Early Easter

Last April, shortly after Easter, my mom bought some Easter egg dyes so that we could dye some of our white wool roving. April was a very long time ago, and we still hadn't gotten around to dyeing wool yesterday. So I was asked if I could just dye some by myself, since by then I rather doubted we were ever going to dye our roving.

I looked up a couple of tutorials online, and found a youtube video that covered it all pretty well. You can find it here. I soaked my roving in water and vinegar for half an hour, and while I was waiting I set up my workspace. I spread newspaper and plastic wrap on the floor of my sister's bedroom (she ripped her carpet up a couple of years ago and her floor remains to be constructed of paint-splattered concrete) and I mixed up my dyes. I had four colors: turquoise, gold, indigo, and brown. I laid my well soaked wool out on the plastic wrap and got dyeing. It took about ten minutes to actually paint the wool. Then I rolled it up and put it in the microwave and let it cool and rinsed it out and laid it out to dry.

When I put it in the microwave, I had a lot of dark blue and gold and brown. After it dried:

Pastel shades of green, pink and purple instead of dark tones of blue and gold. I still think it's gorgeous, and can't wait to spin it into what I'm planning on being a double plied sport or worsted. 

Overall, an excellent dyeing experience, but I'm excited to try some other dyes and techniques to get darker shades.