...drumcarder magic!

There are many amazing fiber artists out there who dye fantastic colorways - but after a couple years of trial and error with food grade dyes on fiber and yarn for my personal use, I discovered that just isn't the medium for me. While I now have proper dye pots and professional acid dyes, so far, it is only for dyeing semi-solids for batt fodder. The graphic designer in me just wants a lot more control over blending and placement of colors than I've been able to achieve in a dye pot, so the drum carder is my very best friend!  Sometimes though - you want to muddy the palette! And the drumcarder works just as well as kettle dyeing for that too.

This is an example of a dyed braid I received in a swap that was really soft, but my complexion does not appreciate purple...with lots of shiny pink & red add ins, bamboo, firestar, and angelina. I divided up everything into three parts before carding. The right side is the first batt after one pass thru the carder. You can still see the white and pink segments clearly here and some light purple.

Now you can see how "pink" it all become after a 2nd pass thru the drumcarder. The right is the single of just this mixture spun, and the bottom left is the first skein of yarn, one ply is another lighter pink batt I splurged on last summer. It's still a much cooler pink than it would be without all the dark purple blended in, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.