Note to self: buy proper dye

Last night, I took the last chunk of fleece from my spinning starter kit and determined to dye it in an Interesting Way.  Pre-dying, it was shades of cardboard.  Not very Interesting.

Since I've been playing with Kool-Aid for this venture, I don't have to worry about accidentally poisoning anything so I just use whatever biggish container happens to be clean.  My last two attempts were solid colors dyed in translucent Rubbermaid containers, so I could more or less see what was going on with the dying process.  This time, all my containers were in the dishwasher.  No problem.  I can just use one of my pots, which happen to be lined with black Silverstone.  This was where things got interesting.

I was attempting to create a tone-on-tone effect with one color (Grape) with splotches of a second color (Blue Raspberry).  I got the fleece into the pot of hot water, and made some heavy stripes and sprinkling with Grape and a few piles with Blue Raspberry, with the idea that the color would slither down the fleece and Make Interesting Things Happen. This should have worked.  I couldn't tell, of course, because of the dark fleece being in a black pot. 

Did you know that the coloring in Grape Kool-Aid *separates*?  I did get blue blotches, and much of the base color is a kind of gentle burgundy, but there are also red splotches from the dye separating and some silvery spots that I am at a loss to explain.  It will be interesting to see how it spins up.  The kid thinks it's pretty; I think it's a kind of rustic Fourth-of-July color.