Leftovers

After dyeing all the wool for the Blugly sweater (which, consequently, I will be knitting for the rest of my life), we had some left over. The wool has actually been not-so-pleasant to spin. First, it's full of vegetable matter. That's "VM" in spinning jargon, and in this case it means that someone mowed a field in New Zealand and dumped all of the clippings on their sheep before they sheared it and sent the wool off to be sold in the U.S., to me, so I'm constantly picking picking picking picking out tiny burrs and pieces of hay. Also, it doesn't like to draft; it likes to stick to itself and pill up and fight me. But, the resulting yarn was worth it and I learned a lot about Making Wool Submit To My Will from it. And it's such pretty gray, I thought maybe I'd just spin the rest of it up undyed. Then I thought, maybe I could just dye it a little bit, but leave some of the natural gray to be enjoyed. So that's what I did.

First I soaked the wool and mixed up some colors. I did this at random, having one idea when I started making up koolaid/food coloring colors and then changed my mind several times.
Here's the soggy wool, laid out on plastic wrap:
Here's my hand, wearing gloves this time, applying koolaid to the wool:
Didn't get a picture of the plastic-wrapped wool cooking in the microwave, but here's the next step, washing the dyed wool in the sink:
And here's some of the finished, dry wool, all wound up, ready to pre-draft and spin:
I've started spinning it already, instead of finishing the Blugly sweater, and I have to admit I'm enchanted with it. The colors looks so different in yarn form! I've only got 1.5 bobbins done; I'm going to do a third and then 3-ply it with my new tensioned-lazy-kate. I can't wait to see it plied!