Tie-dying?

Inspired by a blog post by Mary Egbert that I read, I decided to try to tie-dye some roving. I did not do this with super-wash wool (because I don't have any in my stash... yet), but the Heinz 57 I bought from the Woolery (a nice, inexpensive top to use as subject for all of my evil experiments!!!)

I started by chaining one pound of top, dying it in a blue-purple mix, rinsing and re-chaining, and cooking it in a green-pink mix.

Some very cool looking top, if I say so myself! :-D I could not wait to start spinning it!

Note: there was some felting of the wool due to all of the handling, especially when wet, but it drafted quite nicely once it was fluffed a bit.

The top looked amazing (imo), but I soon noticed a problem... the color changes were shorter than the staple length!!!

The color variations were much more subtle than I had hoped for. A lovely color, mind you, just not quite what I had envisioned.

I plied this with some grey Icelandic wool. I really liked the color overall, but I wanted a yarn with a bit more impact. I took the skein (I had wound it on a 2.6 yard niddy-noddy) and chained the yarn itself. I sent it back for another round in the blue-purple dye bath.

I was very pleased with the result!

It is also knitting up quite nicely. I will definitely be trying this again!