Saturday evening’s dyeing experiment made me brave.  So when Shireen left her dyeing supplies in my kitchen when she left, Sunday suddenly became filled with colourful possibilities.

When we did our dye date last fall, some of the fibre we tried to dye met with unfortunate endings.  One of the couple of batches I did at the time ended up quite felted, and the other stuff never was all that tempting to spin.

So Sunday morning, I grabbed a couple of the single batches of unknown-but-likely-wool fibre and gave them a go.

I soaked the fibre in vinegar and water for the prescribed time and then drained the soaking water into the crock.

The first braid was supposed to be a pale watery blue-green and a chocolate brown – but after immersing the fibre in the blue dye bath, I wimped out with the brown, fearing it would not stick to the fibre properly and that I’d end up with a grungy mess.  This one is sort of pretty, but I’d have preferred that it was either lighter and more water-y or darker and more turquoise-y.

Water’s Edge

I had an idea for a blood orange colourway, so I mixed up some orange dye using the colours I had on hand and then when the fibre was fully immersed, I dropped some more red on the top of the fibre.

I left it in the crock and promptly forgot about it….returning later to find the dye bath exhausted, but the water actually boiling.  Shockingly, it does not seem to be felted at all and the resulting braid looks something like this.

Blood Orange

I am not delighted with either of them, but it was a fun experiment and I am hoping I’ll get brave enough to try something more interesting next time the spirit moves me.