The results of gradient dyeing....

I was going to wait to Woolly Wednesday to show the results of my gradient dyeing, but I am too excited to wait..

You may, dear reader, remember that I experimented with gradient dyeing a few weeks back - well I can only say success..................

Firstly the single roving that I dyed with Dark Teal and Lemon Yellow.

Total weight 140 grams Polwarth and Tencel Blend

 

Where the teal and yellow met I got a lime green which was great, unfortunately in the cooking some of the teal got on the end so the lemon lime bit got a bit splodgy.  Also the tencel didn't take any dye at all - that's the shiny white bits on the second picture.  The reason that there are big bits of tencel is because I didn't request five passes for my custom blend from World of Wool.

Spinning - to spin this I divided the roving/top into two down the middle and spun from dark to light using a short forward draw.

I did take lots of photos of the process, but I won't bore you with a series of pictures showing the different shades on the same bobbins, nice as they are, just take it as seen.  I also had to remove a lot of the tencel which has no strength of its own - wasting nearly 15 grams of fibre!

I two plied the yarn and this is the result:

Just enough for this:

Now the to the second experiment - this was 100 grams of I think Polwarth.  For this I divided the fibre into four equal amounts.  Using a dye solution of 1:10 I dyed each separately reducing the amount of dye solution (you can see pictures of this on my previous blog) and I got this:

In hindsight I should have done this in a pan rather than the microwave, as this would have given a more even tone, but nevertheless I got one very dark, one dark, one medium and one light as planned.

Again for spinning I divided each quarter in half and spun first the light, then medium and so on.....

I wanted lace weight and that's what I got - it was a fabulous spin (super fine without a break and absolutely no effort), again I used a short forward draw (quess who's been watching spinning vidoes lately??) and the result is just under 600 metres from 99 grams................ of perfectly plied yarn

This is the skein straight of the Niddy Noddy - not a kink in sight!

Drum roll please, introducing Shades of Merlot a skein of superlusciousness IMHO.....

As you can guess I am rather pleased with myself - have done a little series of bunny hops of happiness and Mr S is more than a little cheesed off with having to look again at the skein with pretended delight..

Next an attempt at Colour Shifting Yarn similar to these!