Fiber fun

Last week I went on a fabulous fiber field trip with friends Maggie, John and Terri. The event was a gathering of fiber folks at the wonderful High Prairie Fibers. To top off the excitement of meeting a group of amazing people and learning volumes, I brought home some new dyes so that I can start playing 'mad fiber scientist' on my own.

So earlier this week I decided to take the plunge and start dyeing some of my fiber stash. I started with a couple of bumps of a nondescript white wool and a couple of bumps of naturally colored, striped roving from The Sheep Shed's Grab Bag Special.

I had spun several bumps of this wool in its natural state, but wanted to play around with over-dyeing it to see what would happen.


I wanted to try out solar dyeing, so I decided to try one batch sitting in the sunroom window, and the other in the solar oven to compare the results.

white roving with emerald green dye, in amongst the rosemary

Brown striped roving with emerald green dye in the solar oven

The results were mixed. I packed too much fiber into the jar, and the clouds rolled in so neither the jar or the solar over really maintained enough heat for long enough, but it was a fun experiment nonetheless.

Here's a close-up of the jar dyeing right before I pulled it out and rinsed it. The color gradations were really cool, but I especially liked the reflections of the trees in the glass.

And the resulting rovings...

I will spin them seperately and then ply together for the finished yarn. I also did a set of the same white and striped rovings in Fire Red, but by this time the clouds had rolled in, so dyed them on the stove.

Will post pics of the finished yarns when I have a chance.