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"Tidal Treasures" is spun from a hand-dyed (by me -- Yay! That's a first) wool roving of unknown origin. (Again, I'm totally lost past knowing that it came off a sheep. Yes I have a copy of In Sheep's Clothing, and no, I still can't tell.) The batt was dyed with a low immersion union dye, and acid set.
Ok, that sounds pretty fancy, and pretty much an awful lot like I have some clue what I'm doing. Don't be fooled -- I don't. I'd been wanting to start dying my own roving for a while, but I was desperately a-feared of accidentally felting it or something. Never mind the fact that I can chuck a 100% shetland sweater into a hot/cold cycle, toss it into the dryer, and come out with.... a very clean sweater of the exact size and shape I started with. I was trying to make felt when I did that, so "logic" says that if I'm not trying, things will felt. And, seriously, contemplate briefly the idea of rinsing roving.... Will it ever be proper roving again? Will it do like cotton balls when they've been wetted and dried and become a sad, stiff, totally flat and unworkable thing? I have books that tell me how to dye roving, but it's a terribly involved process, with a lot of words and loads of warnings about all the things that can go wrong. It's pretty intimidating stuff, really. But then I stumbled across some terribly exciting directions for low immersion dying with roving, and I thought, wow.... That looks easy! I wonder if I can screw something that simple up?
Apparently not. I used dylon dyes - groan all you want, ye dye divas of cyberspace, but I've been chucking yardages of wool into rit to dye them since before I'd even thought to consider the possibility of felting them or the intricate relationship between protein fibers and acid dyes. Truth told, I have actually used proper acid dyes, soda ash and all, and honestly..... It's a lot like work. There's all with the measuring and then with the mixing, and again with the maths..... Yuck! It was 9pm when I finally screwed up the courage to try this, so I went with the easy option. Besides, for the queen of rit over here, dylon is kind of a step up. ;) I put dark blue dylon into the bottom of the mason jar with hot tap water and vinegar, then stuffed the roving into the jar. I made mini-batches of an aqua blue and a mid-green, and squished those onto the roving, down the sides of the jar, splashed a little vinegar over the top, covered the jar with waxed paper and put it on a plate, then nuked the whole shebang per the directions. (The waxed paper is so that you don't get dye all over the microwave, in case you're doing something totally unsafe like using the normal food nuke-a-nator for this. Don't do this. Be smarter than I am.) And I rinsed the roving in a bowl of cold water. And I let it dry over night. And .... absolutely nothing traumatic happened. Where I had had white fluffy roving, I ended up with mottled blue-green fluffy roving. Neat!
The resulting wool was spun as a thick and thin single, and plied against a nylon crochet cord. There are multicolored glass beads and several dozen freshwater pearls threaded on a holographic shimmer thread. The beads and pearls are spaced out irregularly through the yarn. There are also bits of gold illusion netting (aka, uber-fancy tulle) through into the ply. At the right angle when the yarn is all coiled up, the tulle looks like the foam from crashing waves, full of sea glass and pearls. Hence the name, "Tidal Treasures". I like this one. It turned out quite nicely.
Stats: 8-10 WPI, 2 ply w/ beads and freshwater pearls, 50 yds, art yarn
