this is some of my first experiments at using old pysanky dyes to dye wool top. i feel so bad wasting the dyes… but after a couple years, they don’t dye strong enough on the eggs to use for the annual egg dying party and need to be replaced…. so now i think i have a good use for them!

i soaked the roving in a water/vinegar solution first… then squeezed out and laid it out on plastic wrap. i spooned dyes randomly over the the roving. wrapped it up in the plastic wrap and microwaved to steam the dye in. 1 min on high… take it out for about 3 minutes… then another 1 minute on high. let it cool in the plastic wrap… then rinsed with a little euclan… and then clear water… hung to dry.

there was some dye bleed in the euclan rinse… but i think that’s because i used too much with my random method and it wasn’t exhausted. the water rinse ran clear.

now, i just need to see how it hold up to spinning, washing, and light fast testing.

Aug 16, 2009

all the tests are done and i’ve made samples of all the colors. whew! read all about it in my blog posts…

Jan 1, 2010

i’ve started spinning up the rainbow samples.

March 10, 2010

spinning up the samples continues…

but i reserved 1/3 of each color to play with blending with my handcards. those have all been blended up into samples now :)

7-22-2010

finally got some more mill end roving to dye the last to color samples. immediately dyed them up! they are cooling now. soon, i can start plying up my singles :)

Spinning progress:

Spinning Carded Blend Samples:
(spun on spindle and andean plied)

all small hand carded samples spun on drop spindle and andean plied.

Spinning Solid Samples:
(spun on Babe wheel and 3 plied in combos with each other)

4-2011

all finished with spinning and plying finally! the plying took forever, since it was a low priority project. each set had to be measured out so that i ended up with 42 small skeins all the same length.