I am so determined to dye my alpaca and retain all the lovely features of this fiber - softness, fineness, loftiness, and mainly - easy to spin.
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I'm using Pollux's baby alpaca to experiment. Here's today's adventure:
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I weighed up 2 one ounce samples. Turned my crock pot on. Started heating a tea kettle full of water. I wound one ounce of roving lightly around the inside of the crock pot and poured 1/2 cup of white vinegar onto it, then half my tea kettle of hot water, just about covering the fiber. Then I dyed by dipping the end of wooden spoons into the powder and applying it to the roving (this was fun seeing the colors explode). I sort of divided it into fourths & used 4 colors.
I repeated this same procedure using the rest (1 ounce) of my roving.
I turned the crock up to high, covered it, and cooked for 30 minutes. The water was clear so maybe I could have stopped sooner.
I took the pot out and let it set until cool.
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I put this in my Etsy shop but have some that I "cooked" yesterday and am spinning up today. It is really fun to work in some color. Like Peggy, I dearly love the natural colors of alpaca but just need to do different stuff once in a while. I'll post my yarn tomorrow when I finish spinning it.