Does anyone here dye wool?

[SoupDragon]

I had so much fun over the summer using cheap tie dye kits from Aldi to dye Drops wool and I was wondering whether anyone else dyed their own wool.

I've had a go. I got the book 'Dyeing to spin and knit' by Felicia Lo which was really helpful. I've been using acid dyes on wool which have so far come out really nicely. What are you planning to dye?

Sorry I've just read that properly. What's the Drops stuff like to dye? I got some undyed superwash merino 4ply online to try as I mostly do socks or scarves. I'd quite like to do enough for a jumper though.

I've been using Drops Merino, BabyMerino and the Alpaca Lace. All have dyed well from white/off white!

I don't know what the dyes in the Aldi tie dye kits are but they seem to do the job nicely.

They are lovely. The first one is beautiful - what will it become?
As I understand it, the acid bit of acid dye relates to how it sets, so if you've dyed wool with it and used an acid to set it the they are probably acid. I bought a starter kit from the same place I got the wool to start me off.
I haven't done any for a bit as I've just got a spinning wheel which is taking up most of my free time trying to work out why it's not doing what I expected! Once I've cracked that I will try dyeing the fleece.

They don't use anything to set them. I washed a test bit though and the dye survived so I'm guessing it's fine. I didn't want to go for the acid dyes at this stage as I didn't know what I was doing. These kits had great colours, were for cotton and wool/silk and were cheap!

The first one is the Drops DK merino. I dyed 4 balls so it's over 400m - I'm guessing a scarf of some kind maybe? The balance of colour isn't quite right I don't think. The purple needed to be about 2" further, so just over half the skein length. Still, it's only for fun and a learning curve!

I've also dyed some white sari silk yarn with turquoise/green/purple and is quite possibly the most beautiful yarn I've seen - the sheen on it makes it almost shimmer. It fuzzed slightly with all the handling though.

I find spinning fascinating (purely as an onlooker!). It's almost like magic :)

It is a bit like magic - I think I'm getting better but could really do with a lesson or something. I taught myself to knit from the internet and was hoping I could do the same with spinning.
I wonder if the tye dye kits already have something in them to set the dye?
This is the last one I dyed.

Acid dyes work on 'protein' fibres, so the ones that come from animals rather than the cellulose fibres from plants. Ive used landscape dyes and they are stunning,.not as cheap as Aldi I'd guess.but really good quality. I use the microwave to set them. You can get different effects by balling, hanking or twisting the hank and going for a single colour or space dying.

Oooh now I've got myself all excited, going to see what's in the cupboard and have a play!

Ooooh, I like that one.

At the moment I'm looking at hand dyed yarn on Etsy and using that as inspiration. I've also watched a fair few You Tube videos which is why I knew the tie dye kits would work. Someone went into great depth testing adding acid, using heat etc and nothing seemed to make much difference to the result. These were great kits to have a play with anyway (we will forget about the Smurf Hands due to inadequate gloves 😂)

I think I want to have a go at something more subtle next. These dyes are very bright at full concentration so I'll maybe try diluting them more.

The book I mentioned earlier was really useful when explaining how to calculate depth of shade and different techniques for dyeing. I havent got a microwave so I've only tried doing it in a big old stock pot.