 I bought Ashford wool dye and some Merino roving. I want to dye the roving in bright colors, spin it, and then use it to make a scarf, for example. It's quite a bit of work altogether. |
 I start by preparing the dye. You need 1 gram of dye per 100 grams of wool. Since I don't need that much, I prepare a liter of dye and use only a small amount. I don't add any acid yet to keep the dye mixture stable. Using the dye, I create spots on my pre-soaked roving. Then, I wrap the roving in plastic wrap and place it in a glass bowl that I can clean thoroughly in the dishwasher. |
 The roving goes into the microwave for 3 minutes on high. Then, I let it cool down. Once the roving has cooled a bit, I unfold the plastic wrap, allowing the wool to cool further. |
 When the wool has cooled down sufficiently, I rinse it in clean water and lay it out to dry on a towel. The roving looks beautiful. |
| When I braid the roving, it looks even more delightful. Almost a shame to use it. Here's one braid, but I've made two that are approximately identical. One braid weighs about 125 grams. |
 Before I start spinning the wool, I split the roving into 4 roughly equal parts. It's not crucial that they are perfectly even in thickness. Approximately is good enough. Then I spin them on my Ashford Elisabeth spinning wheel. It looks colorful! |
 You can see all the colors from the braid, along with some blended tones. There's about 60 grams of wool on one bobbin, which is 2 of the 4 parts of a braid. |
 I had two braids, so I ended up with 4 bobbins, each with about 60 grams of wool. You can see three bobbins on the tensioned lazy kate here, and one bobbin on a regular lazy kate. |
 The threads are combined into a 2 ply. That means I twist 2 threads together. The colors make it look very cheerful. |
 I've wrapped the yarn around a spinner's control card. From that, I can see that I can fit 14 wraps neatly side by side in 1 inch. So, the yarn thickness is 14 wraps per inch (WPI), which is approximately DK weight. That's useful to know if you plan to knit something with it. The yarn might become slightly loftier after washing. This would make the thickness approximately 12-13 WPI, which is Sport weight. |
 After plying, I wind the yarn onto a Niddy Noddy. I'm using a fairly large one because it's become quite a bundle of yarn. There's around 125 grams on one bobbin now. |
 The two skeins look nice like this. Together, they weigh 250 grams, and there's over 500 meters of yarn. |
 They're for an acquaintance; I hope she'll be happy with them and make something nice.Do you spin yourself? If so, you might enjoy taking a look at my portfolio. I regularly offer hand-dyed roving for spinning. |