Cooking with Colour

We're having a grey, wet, freezing day (not actually freezing rain, though, thank goodness), so I'm having a play day with wool in the kitchen. The last couple of nights I spindle-spun about 50g of Corriedale into a fingering weight yarn. This morning I plyed it on a larger spindle, then hauled out my brand new pack of Wilton food dyes. Hint: when you drop into Michaels to buy this stuff, make sure you have one of their 40% off coupons. You almost never need to pay full price there.
Here's my yarn all plyed, but not yet washed, and wound into a nice cake.

I thought I'd try for a gradient dye job, following the instructions here. It being a dull day, pinks and oranges seemed like a good idea.

Soon I had everything set up. So exciting!

While I'm waiting for the dyes to do their job, I'll mention that I started off the day trying out a different method of yarn management for plying. Instead of my usual double-stranded centre-pull ball, I wound doubled strands around a tennis ball, as suggested by Abby Franquemont. Turns out, I wasn't happy with that. The ball was too big and awkward in my little hand, and I missed the ease of drawing the yarn out from the centre without having to manipulate the ball in my left hand. Like most things in knitting and spinning, what works for one person just isn't the best method for another.

So, in the end I re-wound the ball on my ball winder and did my usual thing. Now, I'm off to check on those mason jars full of joy.