Thistles and Heather

Two Rovings

For my second round of dyeing I wanted some softer, less-saturated colors. As you can see from the picture, it didn’t work. These two batches of roving were supposed to be softer, grayer colors. Why didn’t it behave?
Ah well. That just means I’ll get to try again later. More fiber to play with!

If anyone is interested in replicating these colorways, here is how I made them.

I started with three Jacquard Acid Dyes. Crimson (619), which that site doesn’t have, Gold Ochre (636), and Sapphire Blue (622). You dump the 1/2 ounce container of dye into a glass jar, then add 1 cup of hot water. This gives you the base for mixing and diluting as much as you want, and you can screw a lid on it and store it for a long time. When you want to use it again, just take off the lid, pop it in the microwave to heat up, and you’ve got it! (I nuked mine for one minute each.) Note: I just found out that the dye directions say to heat them up on the stove. I don’t know whether the microwave did any damage or not. The method I used is oven dyeing. You can find the tutorial here. Oh, and for the record, 150 degrees Celsius is 302 degrees Fahrenheit. I just used 300 degrees.

Read the tutorial before you read the stuff below. It’ll make more sense.

Green and Pink Roving

For the Green/Pink colorway: 1 and a 1/2 ounces of light gray roving. Soaked for 45 minutes, with a quarter sized squirt of Dawn. I drained out most of the water, but left enough so I could see it around the edges.

Take two plastic cups and a couple plastic straws for stirring and “measuring.” I would stick a straw into the dye up to about two inches, then press my finger over the top to suction the liquid in, and release it into the mixing cups.

Green: Seven parts yellow to two parts blue. Add hot water to bring the total amount of liquid up to 1 cup. For the record, I’m guessing that the total amount of dye before adding the water was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 tablespoon. It covered the bottom of the plastic cup and reached about 1/4 to 1/2 inch high. To the mixed dye I added 2/3 of a 1/4 cup of vinegar. (That’s the best way I can explain it, because math gets a little shaky when you get down that small.)

Pink: Two parts red and a tiny, tiny touch of blue. Like a half drop. Add a 1/2 cup of hot water and the other 1/3 of the quarter cup of vinegar. This dye looked really red until it came out of the oven, when it went more fuchsia.

I poured my dye on in stripes across the roving. The pink turned out much more intense than I planned. Next time I’ll try adding even more water. Or maybe it was the amount of vinegar I used. Too many variables!

Pink and Green

Here is what the roving looked like after baking, while it was still wet. The colors lightened up once it dried. At this stage it reminds me of a watermelon. A far cry from a thistle, but it’s still pretty. I’ve started spinning it, and the pink goes a little rusty wherever it gets wrapped with the green. It’s actually a little more “thistly” in single form than in roving form. Something good to keep in mind is that some colors may darken a bit when you spin them.

Green, Purple, and Blue

For the Green/Purple/Blue colorway: 2 ounces of light gray roving. Soaked for 30 minutes. I drained most of the water out of this, but left enough to saturate the wool without much standing water. And I apologize because I didn’t keep as good notes on this one. “Actual results may vary.”

Use 3 cups for this, and you’ll need straws again.

Green: Four parts yellow to one part blue. The numbers are different, but you can see that the two greens were pretty similar. Add water to bring the dye up to 2/3 or 3/4 of a cup. (At least, I think that’s what my notes mean. It’s either that, or that the green and purple dyes combined make 2/3 to 3/4 of a cup. I believe it’s the way I put it, but just keep that in mind. If your dyes start looking really watery, let me know!) I used less vinegar in this one; only a 1/6 of a cup. (Fill the quarter cup a quarter full and pour out half of it.)

Purple: Two and a half red to one blue. Add the same amount of hot water as for the green, and the same amount of vinegar. As a side-note, the purple did something rather strange, and I’m not sure why. The red bled out from the sides of the purple, so I have a purple chunk with pinky red splotches to either side. Maybe I didn’t use enough vinegar to set the red.

Blue: Two blue. Fill with hot water to a 1/4 cup. Add 1 teaspoon of vinegar.

And here is the still wet roving.

Green and Purple

I had some trouble with patches of roving not getting dyed on these. There has to be some way to help prevent that. Maybe if I make sure the dye flows down into the bottom of the pan . . . although I’ve heard that you want to be careful not to make a sort of brownish sludge color all across the bottom of your roving.