Well, I have been wanting to dye our yarn or fiber for awhile.  I even bought 3 colors of dye at the 2007 Maryland Sheep and Wool, but I haven't taken the plunge and tried to dye- until today!  Over Christmas break Charlene, Rose, and I went to Rosemary Bailey's to see how she does some of her felting fiber arts.  Rosemary is an artist who displays her work at the Heron Gallery.  She works primarily with merino sheep fiber.  We wanted to see her work and said we would share some of our alpaca fiber with her.  While we were visiting she showed us her crock pot dying.  It looked easy enough so I got my spinning wheel cranking and made some white alpaca yarn for dying.  Once I got my yarn spun and plied, I put it on a warping board so I could make an 8 foot long skein.



I made it 8 foot long because I want to use two colors.  I want to use purple and pink.  I will use mostly pink and just a bit of purple.  I am using Gaywool dyes.  I put 2 teaspoons of pink and 1/4 teaspoon of purple.  I have mixed this in the crockpot my friend Charlene gave me.  Thanks Charlene.  Here is how it started.





After an hour I added more water and a splash of vinger.  The purple is really spreading.



It now cooks for about 8 hours.  In the morning the purple had spread throughout the dye bath and the yarn looks primarily purple, but it does have a bit of magenta/pink highlights.  I am not sure it was really necessary to create a long skein on the warping board.