I showed a few of these over on the Felting and Fiber Studio recently but each evening I have made a few more batts. Thought you’d like to see all the woolly goodness!
Category Archives: Carding
A Beautiful Day to Dye
I spent all day today dyeing wool roving, washed merino fiber and a shibori scarf. I used acid dyes to dye the wool. The scarf photos did not turn out so I will have to show you that one later when the light is better. My friend Paula came over and carded some really fine merino roving into batts and dyed a little fiber too.
Here is all the dye set out and one bit of dye mixed up. Most of the pots, I just dyed a solid color. But I did try a few pots with mixed dyes in them.

I had three pots steaming away on the stove.
Here’s a red one.
And a blue one.
Here’s some orange roving in the sink waiting to be put through the spin cycle on the washing machine.

Paula got her wool in at the end of the dye bath after it was nearly exhausted. This is a mix of blue and purple which actually looks better than this photo depicts. It is close to a pale denim color.
This is another one of Paula’s that is a really pretty very pale green.
Paula got three batts carded. This is really fine (15.5) merino and it is so soft.
Here’s a bunch of my roving hung up in the bathroom on the shower curtain rod. I couldn’t believe that I got black when I wasn’t trying. I was going for a deep blue but ended up with black. When I try to get black, it rarely comes out very well.
Here’s some more roving drying. The one on the left was done with three colors, violet, salmon and cherry red.

Since I had the dye pots out, I thought I’d dye more of the washed merino fiber that I have. I did blue,
really dark green,
and a mix of magenta and purple. Now I have bunches of pretty colors to use in my felting projects. The really bright ones are for cat toys. People seem to thing that cats need to have bright-colored toys.
Green Fiber Transformed
Or perhaps I should say permutated? My friend Deb told me that she was impressed with my “50 cent” word “Permutations” but that it sounded just like me. Thanks Deb! Anywho, I have been turning the dyed fibers into batts. This is one of my favorite parts. I love those nice fluffy batts when they come right off the carder. These have merino wool, silk noil, banana fiber, Tencel, flax, cashmere and angora fibers.
I added in some reds and pinks to liven up the greens a bit. I can’t wait to see how these look when they are felted.
The close up photos just didn’t turn out well. I need to work out this macro business on my camera.
The stack is growing…
I’ve been working all week, teasing out Merino fiber and then carding it. I still have at least 3 times more fiber than what’s shown left to card. Luckily, I get to keep the borrowed drum carder longer. Thanks Bunny! So I will keep carding a batt or two every day and hopefully will get all the wool carded before the end of the year.
Our surface design group is meeting this afternoon. We haven’t met since June due to scheduling difficulties so I’m excited to get back to it again. We are going to paint a 6 foot stretch of cotton fabric today. So more photos to come. Have a great Friday!


