Dye Dabbling!

New Years Day I decided to get right on with it and soaked some fibre from my stash ready to dye. This is white English wool tops with viscose nepps.

I have dyed 400g (about 16oz) with Kool-aid, I want to do alot of dying in 2007 so I had to start somewhere.

This second photo is one of my handpainted snakes as Neo has been calling them, as you can see being a messy person I use a large deep tray to keep my stuff contained.

I used 8 sachets on the first 300g (instead of the recommended 1 sachet per oz) as this was a recommendation for yarn not fibre, although its not that I think I need less dye for fibre, infact, I'm not sure, the thing with the Kool aid is that it can be quite unpredictable so I wasn't sure what to expect, part of the fun with this sort of dying, and the thing is with fibre, from what I have seen so far, well I wasn't too worried about the final results, because it will start to change as you start to spin and you can always overdye if you're not keen on the results.

The last 100g I dyed with a slightly different mix, although with a shake of 'mad scientist' and 'magic twist' kool aid I still wasn't sure what to expect, I used the full 4 sachets on this 100g, just to assess the strength of colour.

As you can see these are the greener two 'snakes' coiled onto the tray to cool. They look a bit like a Walk in The Garden....what do you think Marianne?

I cooked all of them on full power for 10mins in the microwave 100g at a time.

They've been left to dry overnight, and I'm hoping to start spinning some later today.

The best effect which I thought would probably happen, and which I wouldn't have got with an acid dye is the viscose nepps hasn't taken any colour, so this is going to be a nice effect as I spin, (hopefully).