Been dyeing

As I sat spinning my plain merino roving the yesterday morning I thought: I'd like to dye this so it looks like my favorite plant: lavendar. Right. Time for another bout of learning.
I had ordered an acid dye sampler kit that came with the primaries and black. I have zero experience mixing colors so I read as much as I could on the internet, made some trips around town to get some acid dye appropriate cookware (and a respirator), and got to it.
I snagged a few leaves from my lavender out front, but the blooms have already faded in the heat so I had to work from memory on the color of the flowers. Since I had already spun a bobbin full of plain singles I decided I would immersion dye that with a medium saturation purple and then paint the other half of the un-spun roving using three different saturations each of purple and green. I wanted leave enough white that when I plied them together it would look heathered.

I played with the colors, going very gut-based since it was hard to tell what it would look like in the dark dye solutions. I decided that the purple would be more blue than red and have a touch of black. The green would also be more blue than yellow, and have a hefty dose of black.

Well.


I'm pleased as pie. The photo doesn't capture it exactly but the colors worked out! I'm amazed. The week of luck continues, I guess. It's super encouraging to have success mixing these colors out of red, blue, yellow, and black and I hope to cook up all kinds of color mixes in the future!

This morning I immersion dyed the singles. I'm a bit nervous about that since I don't know how it'll work out to ply after setting the twist. Hm. But I'm very happy with the color and can't wait to see how this all works out!

Off to start spinning my lavender yarn...