Out of the dye pot...

I am thrilled that Jeanne has received her spin roving swap package! You can see pics on her blog of what I sent.

Here are some pictures I took while I dyed the roving. Here the wet (soaked in hot water and vinegar for 1/2 an hour) roving was laid out on my dining room table on top of some plastic wrap. I used sponge brushed to put on the dye, leaving a bit of white space between to allow room for the dye to migrate and mix together.

I flipped it over to see how well the dye was saturating through - you can see there is still a lot of white space where I dabbed on more dye.

Its a roving burrito! After this it goes into a canning pot where I've lined the basket with mesh from an old screen (there was a bad storm and a screen got blown onto my deck but the frame was too damaged to fix...free mesh!)

After steaming for about 40 minutes, there is gingerly removal of the burrito from the pot. Now some people wait until its cool before rinsing and say that there is better uptake of the dye. I've found no real significant difference myself. So here is the rinsed roving in my surprisingly and unusually clean sink.

I hung it to dry for a day or so, fluffed it out and voila!

Then I bid it a sad farewell but released it into the "wild" knowing it was going to a good home and will hopefully be keeping someone warm in the future.