Dyeing roving is a little bit magical!
The colors always seem to play so nicely. Roving is carded fiber that is reading for spinning, in this case, a very fine Merino. The addition of color makes it beautiful, but can be a little tricky. Roving requires very careful handling to avoid felting the fibers, and a nice, slow drying time, followed by some gentle fluffing to loosen up any fiber that has become compacted while wet.
This roving is going off to a friend for spinning. I can't wait to see what she does with it. It's always unpredictable — you can't quite imagine how the roving will spin up (see an example here). Handspun yarn is so pretty that I often keep a skein on my desk just for its looks. But it deserves to be knit with and one of my knitting resolutions is to knit with my handspun more often. The results are always wonderful. I have some of this yarn sitting around, waiting to become something.
And I'm hoping to use the yarn from the roving pictured at the top to trim a gray hat and mittens set.
