A litle dyeing, a little spinning, a little knitting

I have been doing a little bit of a lot of different things this week. I knit quite a bit during the week. Yesterday I spun for a couple of hours to get some variety and color into my fiber world. And today, I am dyeing up some yarn samples to see what I need to do to get the color I want.
This is the shawl, as of this morning. Nice, isn't it? I think it will be a big shawl. I love how the colors are getting darker as I go down. That is what I planned when I spun the yarn. I'm on the last skein., which goes into a black background soon.
Do you remember this top? That got turned into these skeins, which is what is now the shawl I am knitting. This is my first real spinning project and I am thrilled at how it is turning out.
I don't have pictures of the spinning yet but here is some of the dyeing.I am dyeing 10 gm skeins of Cascade 220, from 1 100 gm skein. I am using Wilton's food coloring. They are concentrated colors and in paste form. Today's goal is to mix up the dye and soak the yarn so I can nuke them tomorrow evening to set the dye.


Here are the first 4 jars of dye solution. Each is 250 ml of water with 1/8 tspn of the color. I want to see how deep the color is before I plan to dye the actual yarn. Hence the sampling. From left to right it is Violet, Orange, Lemon Yellow and Christmas Red. I am going also dye Sky Blue, Spring Green, and try to come up with a chartreuse and a magenta by blending these colors. I am also happily dyeing my fingers. I didn't use gloves when I mixed up the first batch. This is just from opening the jars. Since it is food coloring and India's Holi festival was last week, I figure it is OK. If anyone asks me, I celebrated Holi !