Dye Day

Sunday, I dyed.  I dyed all the extra white fiber that I received as a member of the spinning class.  Most importantly, I washed and dyed some fleece that Margaret gave a few of us on Wednesday.  On Saturday, I washed the fleece.  Then the fleece dried overnight.  I ended up with a laundry basket of clean fleece.

Nice.  A few dirty ends, and some short cuts, but nice.  I then ran the lot through my Patrick Green drum carder.  The result: three white batts.  In the meantime, I was dyeing some random pieces of top and one strip of roving, in the usual way.  Nothing to report.  But the batts: I had never dyed batts before.  I chose the turkey pan method, and applied color.

That's three normal sized batts, squooze down into the pan.  It sat in the sun for a while.  Then onto the hot plate for a cook.

Looking good.  But will it felt?  I let it cool of its own free will while I took care of the top and roving.  By mid afternoon, I had my batch out to dry in the shade.

I was pretty happy with the results.  The three batts looked interesting.  Some of the darker color pooled in the bottom of the pan.  But very little color ran out of the bath.  I chose blues for dyeing since it was good blue color weather: cool and overcast clearing late, but not too hot.  The fibers are not dry yet, but should be good to go by Wednesday.