I don’t like to cook and tend to avoid recipes featuring long lists of ingredients. Yet, I was busy with one of those recipes and found that one needed item was “red food coloring”. I knew I had some somewhere so went digging through the cupboards and found not one but four packages of food coloring, each package containing four little bottles of four different colors. Sorting it all out, I found that only one little bottle of the red color still had anything left in it. No sense keeping all of those bottles of green, blue, and yellow when I obviously don’t use them but yet I really do hate to toss perfectly good items in the garbage. Of course, the obvious answer to what to do with the excess flood coloring was to dye some fibers.

Checking the stash, I found I had a lot of white Jacob roving on had so I weighed out two strips of roving, each strip weighing 2 ounces (56 grams) for a total of 4 ounces (113 grams) of roving.
The roving went into a bucket of warm water, to which I added a few drops of Dawn Dishwashing Detergent, and was left to soak for an hour. The roving should be soaked through for dyeing but not be so wet that it is drippy.

While the roving was soaking, I assembled the following:
1. Newspapers
2. Large plastic trash bags (or a tarp)
3. Plastic self adhering food wrap
4. Empty jars, one for each color to be used
5. White vinegar
6. The food coloring
7. Spoons for stirring the dyes, one for each color
8. Foam brushes, one for each color
9. A measuring cup

Also needed: a microwave oven.

Place the large trash bags or tarp on your work surface and cover that with the newspapers.
Lay the food wrap over the newspapers. Then place the roving on the food wrap, centering the strips of roving lengthwise on the plastic wrap. I placed 2 strips of roving side by side so each strip would be dyed the same way.

Mix the dyes: Measure 3/4 cup of white vinegar into each jar, then add the food coloring to each jar. Food coloring is measured by the drop so just count the drops. The more drops of food coloring, the darker the color. Note that food dyes do tend to make lighter colors so a fair amount is needed for darker shades. I used: 15 drops of blue and got a light blue; 30 drops of green gave a very pale pastel green; and 15 drops of yellow gave a pastel yellow.

Dab the dyes onto the roving with the foam brushes. These brushes give good control over color placement on the roving. You can choose to pain the entire roving or to leave some areas in the natural color of the wool.
Once the roving is painted, roll it up sausage style in the food wrap. Coil up the roving “sausage” and put it into the microwave. Cook on high for 5 minutes and then check it.
CAUTION: IT WILL BE VERY HOT!!!! Then turn it over and cook on high for 5 minutes more. Check it again. Mine looked “done” after 10 minutes - the dyes all appeared to be absorbed into the wool. If the dyes do not appear to be absorbed, give it some more cooking time but do not exceed 20 minutes total cooking time.

Once the roving is cooked, allow it to cool and then rinse it until the rinse water runs clear and then hang it to dry.