A stone troll trying to burst out of my crock pot? No… roving soaking up coffee. This was my first attempt at dying roving.
To be honest, it didn’t work out as planned. Not that the colour didn’t turn out, but my roving felted which is not a good thing when you are wanting to spin. Luckily it was a small batch so I tried again right after with a new batch and got a better result. It turned out a light caramel colour which I thought was a perfect addition to that purple that I still had.
What do you think? 210 yards of Worsted weight (8 WPI) in purple and coffee dyed merino…
My 2nd (or technically 3rd) attempt at dyeing was done with food colouring….
Here is the roving soaking in water and vinegar to prepare for dyeing (I was so nervous someone would come by and throw something into the sink… I think I will use a container next time!)
The roving is next spread out out on the table on plastic wrap….
Then I added the dye. I used four colours. Teal, brown, orange and green. Before wrapping it up I did press the dye down and make sure it was all covered but looking back, I should have used higher concentrations of dye.
I then steamed it for 30 min and at the end, most of the dye was exhausted but the coloured broke (which I expected) and I don’t think I left enough time for the green to really set.
This is what it looked like after coming out of the steamer…
And then the result once dried…
It turned out a bit more pastel than I wanted but I am pretty happy with the result… I can’t wait to spin it up and see what it looks like and I also can’t wait to try again!
