I threw it all into my crockpot to dye with food coloring. I used 1/2 teaspoon of citric acid crystals dissolved in 4 cups of water. I poured 1 cup of the mixture into a measuring cup and added 30 drops of purple, 20 drops of red, and 10 drops of green (mixed up quite brown.)
Poured it over the dry wool quite willy-nilly. Next mixed up 30 drops green and 20 drops yellow. Then I did a cup of 50 drops pink. At this point I poured 4 cups of plain water into the pot and pushed the wool down so that it was completely submerged. I mixed one last cup of 50 drops blue and poured that into the middle. I set the crockpot on high and walked away.
Two hours later all the dye had absorbed and I drained it, allowed it to cool, and hung it the shower to dry overnight. The next day I got set up to blend.
I was kind of surprised it turned out to be mostly reds and burgundies. Here also is some natural grey merino/alpaca fiber and a partial skein of Artful Yarns Shakespeare that I got on deep discount (I love the really intense blue.) For this blend I layered some of the dyed wool, a small amount of the yarn (single ply bulky- came apart very easily), a small amount of the gray (very small- I didn't use the whole amount shown) and more of the dyed wool on top (I tried to get some of the mohair blend into each set so it would be evenly distributed.)
I only did one pass, then gently peeled the fiber off the cards
and set it aside until I was done carding all the fiber.
Next I rolled up the first batt into a little sausage from side to side so the fibers stayed parallel to each other.
Gently tugging on both ends, I pulled it out to a fairly even snake about an arm-length's long, not too thick so that it's compact but not too thin so that it gets really airy and falls apart. Next I laid it out on the next batt, and tugged on the last 2-3 inches a little so they were a little thinner and overlapped more.
This batt got rolled up with the end of the snake in the middle. It then got the same pulling and lengthening process. Be careful as the snake gets longer and longer - it has the tendency to fall apart or over twist in some places, weakening it. I ended up making 3 fairly equal lengths (because I still don't really know how to braid one long piece.)
And braided it starting in the middle and working to one end, and then the other, being careful with handling the snakes.
Tada!
This blend feels marvelous -- need to look into ordering some mill-ends and dyeing up some more.
