I’ve had several incidents when wool fibre has felted during dyeing. I’ve tried putting the fibre into a stocking, which helps, and am extra careful not to agitate or overheat the bath, but have now found this great solution. An old slow cooker!

It’s a 6.5 litre family size pot which has been scratched and marked a lot inside but the heating outer is still safe and both work fine. I find this size works best with 50g max of fibre. If using acid dyes I put the fibre in a bag, if using natural I often put the dye material in a bag.

My latest is dying with Buddleia flowers, dead headed from the local park. From a small bag amount (a clean dog poo bag actually) that weighed approximately 100g (including short stems and a few leaves) I dyed two 50g batches of fibre to a lovely rich gold.

My fibre was 150g Scotch Mule locks I had reserved for combing.

The weather is so warm here at the moment I just gentle squeezed and laid the locks out to dry outside.

The bath still has some oomph left after the second batch, but I wanted another colour. My acid dyes are all packed away in preparation for moving, so I resorted to the food colouring. A few dabs of violet gave a lovely greeny blue colour, so in went batch 3. The food colouring split a bit, which meant that the fibre is multi coloured with green, blue and rusty pink areas. Very pretty!

I may have to wait to comb the locks as my wool combs are now packed. Maybe I can flick a few locks and test spin them?

All of the fibre had already been scoured but were also pre-soaked in lukewarm water with a dash of Ecover washing up liquid and 5ml white vinegar for about an hour. Not rinsed!

The Buddleia flowers were soaked for 24 hours after being covered with boiling water. Before putting them in the dye bath I tied them into a cotton bag to stop any contamination of the fibres, it would have been a nightmare to try to pick the flowers out of the locks! I could have strained the dye into the bath, but my dyeing sieve is packed, and also I hoped to extract as much colour as possible during the dyeing process.

I added 5% alum by weight to the lukewarm dye bath, a dash more white vinegar and some salt. Then added the fibre, set the slow cooker to Low and left it to do it’s magic for about 3 hours. Then turned it off and left it overnight to cool. In the morning I rinsed the fibre in cool water until clear. So simple!

For the third, food colouring batch, the bath was cold at the start. I added a dab of violet on the end of a teaspoon and stirred until it was dispersed. Then a slug more vinegar and salt and another stir. Then I added the wet fibre and set the cooker off again.

I have another single-person slow cooker that I bought secondhand for £2.50 that takes 10g fibre for sampling. I really like that one at it has a white inner so it’s easy to see the colour and how much has been taken up by the fibre.

If you have an old slow cooker give it a go, but don’t use one that is used for food preparation!