The wool is a mixture of merino and mohair (one strand of each, plied together) which was then washed and hand-painted using Ashford's acid dyes - a little pack of the 3 primary colours. I mixed half a teaspoon of each colour, then mixed some of the red and yellow to create orange, blue and yellow to make green, and blue and red for purple. Then I added more water to each of the six colours as I didn't want them too strong. Each colour was put into a hand sprayer (old hair conditioning sprayers) ready to apply to the wool.
The wetted out (but hand-squeezed) hanks were laid out in the skein on a large piece of polythene and sort of separated into strands as much as was possible. Then I sprayed each colour randomly onto the skeins and left them to seep through the layers. When done, they were steamed for half an hour, left to cool, and then rinsed in clear water and hung up to dry.
The photos show the hanks lying on the polythene just after applying the dyes, and the finished article. I was quite pleased with the finished result. Just got to knit the cardigan now!
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