A Good Day To Dye

Edited to add: Oooh! Oooh! Go over to Rachael's blog first, read it, vote and then come back, ok? Go Rachael!!

Ahem. Where were we? Yes. Ok. Though I don't think the Klingons meant it the way I mean it. Or maybe they're secretly fiber enthusiasts and all that fighting was the result of one horrible misunderstanding.

Saturday I went to Jasmin's house for a nearly all-day dyeing session with the Minions. Not my minions (I have none, though a few around to do my bidding would be nice); they're a group of very fun, very funny and just a touch crazy people. Jasmin will have to tell you from whence the Minion moniker came; I have no idea.

Anyway, I had taken the Icarus Shawl to the yarn shop and received in exchange some lovely Bamboo-Wool blend (below) and a couple of pounds of soft, soft, SOFT merino roving.

While knitting at Purlescence I mentioned that I needed to dye it and was promptly invited over to join the Minions in their dyeing adventures. Yay! I'd never dyed anything before and while I'm perfectly capable of reading and following directions, it seemed as if it would be easier and a lot more fun to join a crowd.

It was a gorgeous day, sunny but cool, and we had the nicest time playing with fiber and color. I had brought 3 types of roving and decided to try a few different techniques and see what happened.

The first one was just a small blob (is that a technical term?) of Blue Faced Leicester that I'd bought for practicing when I got my first spindle last year. I put the soaked roving in a pan, chose a couple of colors, squirted them with various colors and just watched to see what would happen.

The second batch was some some of the Merino I mentioned before. This time I squirted the whole thing with Chestnut dye (unevenly on purpose), let that soak, and then tossed on a few spots of gold (Aztec Yellow I think). It's hard to see in the picture but the crimpy parts of the roving have a nice sheen to them that I really like.

Last, I used up some Corriedale I'd bought at Stitches. This one I dunked and soaked in a dye pot for quite a while. I plan to make socks out of this. They'll be great if I happen to get stuck upside down in a snowbank - anyone will find me if I wear that color on my feet!

I'm pretty happy with all of them and I'm interested to see how they spin up!

I finished up my stuff pretty quickly, so I spent the rest of the afternoon dyeing other people's fiber and generally having a good time. I don't know who owned what, but there was some beautiful stuff made, that's for sure.

He thinks I meant the other kind of die:

Is that the evil eye or what?

Fortunately, he changed his mind and decided to let me live another day.