However... I have peeked in a lot of pots when my colleagues were dyeing. I have been enjoying their lovely colours for ages. I learned a lot about what to use, and in what concentration, and in what sequence, when we were discussing colour choices for museum reconstruction projects.
And starting with the dyeing experiment in 2012, I also got to stir some pots with dye myself... all on my own. Now, for the dyeing experiment, you don't need to know how to dye. You just need to follow the recipe to the last letter - so all the creativity that is part of "real" dyeing work is gone. It's not even a big deal if there are spots on the yarn, because it is not about spotless dyeing, it is about finding out about the influence of metals.
Playing around, creatively, with colours, though - that does also appeal to me. Enter opportunity for that: after the last Forum, there was some madder left over, and some alum. That madder was already soaked (and had started to slightly ferment), so it was about time to be used.
And since I had decided to play around, I did exactly that. I stuffed Romney top into a stocking leg (to cut down on madder particles in the fibre, and on felting), and off it went into the mordant.
After mordanting, it took a nice bath in the madder liquid...
... but came out rather splotchier than hoped for, due to the middle of the stocking leg filling being rather compressed. Now I don't mind splotchy (in modern stuff, not the historical, mind you) - but the light spots seemed almost undyed, and that was too much (or too little) for my taste.
So I stuck it in again, sans the stocking leg this time (which was, instead, used to hold the madder sludge).
The end result is rather nice, I think:
It is a warm, bright red that is hard to photograph. And of course it is full of madder dust, but that just can't be avoided when dyeing with that stuff.
So at some point in the medium future, there might be some madder spinning in store for me...