Lessons Learned

I have good news in that I successfully finished my second skein of my sherbet yarn. It turned out just as yummy as the first and I appear to have a fairly strong match in both color and texture. I am thrilled. So now I have over 500 yards to play with which should be enough to make the Forest Canopy shawl that my spinning teacher speaks so highly of in her blog. I guess mine will be a tropical forest with it's bright colors.

Bolstered by my success with repeating my yarn I decided to get adventurous and play with more dye. I came across a post on Ravelry in which the poster used Wilton's Black icing dye and ended up with this amazing blend of pinks, greens, blues and purples. The final project was amazing. So much so I have set out on an adventure to replicate the colorway. Oh boy - talk about lessons learned.

My first attempt ended very badly by completely ruining 4 oz of roving. Fortunately, this was the 4 oz I got free with the purchase of my wheel so I don't feel too bad. I think I erred on many levels with this batch. First, I used the entire bottle of color. The key to black is that it separates so you get different colors. By using the entire bottle I never really made it past the red. It seemed to overwhelm the roving. I ended up pulling the roving out in progressive increments but by the end I had black. No blues ever made it. So, come to think of it, I do know how to achieve black now. Ok - that's a positive. After I finally gave up and accepted that I had a progression from red to black I pulled out the roving and gave it a good rinse. Then I decided to try a tip from my spinning teacher to throw it in the spin cycle for a few minutes to remove some of the water. Well, my new fancy front loader does not seem to allow you to just spin. It only has a rinse/spin option. You got it. I tried it. What could be the harm? Sigh. So after 20 minutes I had 4 oz of progressive red-black felt. I tried to save it. I was able to pull it apart into strips and ended up with a huge pile of red-black dredlocks. If you ever need to make a dredlock wig I know have a sure fire technique. I did try to spin it up but gave up after I realized it would be a painful effort of pulling. So not worth it. It is currently sitting on my floor looking like a pile of pink/red/black dredlocks. 

So, after accepting that I needed to let go of the first batch I decided to try it again with my final oz of roving in my stash. This time I used much less dye and did not put the entire roving into the pot. I went from vinegar soak to pot to collander in a sequence so that I would have the roving draped in the dye only in the part I wanted to dye. I ended up with a progression from red to green. I never made it to blue. I ran out of roving. Again, I think I used too much dye. But I did not make the same mistake of using the washing machine so at least I have some usable roving this time. It did felt some from the handling though so it is key to handle as little as possible. I think this may end up becoming Christmas ornaments. 

Today I am going to try it again only I am going to work on technique with test samples. I got a new stash of roving (thank you Copper Moose - I cannot say enough good things about this store in that the prices are reasonable and the shipping is fast) to play with so I can experiment some. This time I pulled out about 3/4 oz and I divided it into three strips. I am soaking it in Vinegar right this minute. Next I am going to try a couple different tests. The first I am going to use the progressive technique where I only put in part of the roving at a time but with less dye and I am also going to add a hank of my undyed first spinning attempts to absorb some of the red and green without overdoing it on my roving. My hope is that I will be able to get to the blue and purple. My second will be to use a small amount of dye and drop in the whole roving but up the acid with a splash of lemon juice after I pull the first end out of the batch. Apparently there is a difference in the way the red in the Wiltons reacts with acid so upping the acid may cause the red to stop dying. I am not a chemist so please don't ask me to explain further. If you really want to understand better, find a chemist. Or search the web for info on Wiltons.  I am not sure yet what I will do with the third hank but I am sure I will get inspiration. Its all about learning today. I am also going to minimize my handling of the roving to see if I can avoid felting. 

Well, I hear the giggles of a little boy coming from the bedroom so I know I am soon to be joined by the resident four year old. He is cute, cuddly and snuggle but also he is learning to use my computer. He loves to play Word World on pbskids so often I end up losing my machine to him. Here he is - gotta go.