She dyed, she did...

Day three of the Tour de Fleece and I've finally started. Yesterday I got the roving dyed, which came out in gorgeous pastel tones- it's KoolAid dyed, with pink lemonade (double strength), ice blue raspberry lemonade, arctic green apple and lemonade. I'm particularly proud of that gorgeous parma violet colour where the pink and blue have blended- I'm going to try and recreate that, even though I think the pink is possibly a bit brighter than I wanted. Even more importantly, I haven't felted it even a tiny bit, which is a first for me with dyeing.
The roving was soaked, spread out on clingfilm and had the dye squirted on in quarters, doing each side of each piece, going from yellow at the top, through green and blue and down to pink at the bottom. I then rolled it and sealed it in the clingfilm, coiled the sausages up to make tiny pyramids with the pink at the bottom, and nuked it in the microwave. I finished by dropping the whole package in a sink of fairly hot water and unwrapping it there, and then spun any excess out in the washing machine.
I'm spinning it up now, and so far it's an exercise in predrafting. I've split each length of roving down into 6, and then each 1/6 into a further 4-6 lengths before I spin it. Each piece is being joined at alternate ends, so the pink always joins the pink, and the yellow always joins the yellow and the colour gradations remain smooth and even. I've never predrafted this much before- I started off doing a modified long draw technique, and that's kind of stayed with me, but it has to be said that this is much easier and faster, and is giving really nice crisp clean colours. I'm hoping I don't end up with problems later on from having fibres lying in opposite directions or anything crap like that, but I don't see any reason yet for that to happen.