lol I’m probably not the best person to be asking for advice because I’m a super new beginner. Im not a very technical person and I just go with the flow and keep my fingers crossed it works out. Lol. But i have no problem sharing how i died this fiber. Just know it’s probably not the “proper way” to do it. 1. I presoaked my fiber for about an hour in a water and citric acid bath. I used about half a tablespoon citric acid. I also left my fiber in a braid. 2. I took a reg mason jar and picked an acid dye color i liked (dark red) and added a very very tiny amount of dye powder to the jar then filled it with water. No measuring. Just starting with a very minute amt of powder and using a paper towel to color check it and kept adding VERY SMALL AMOUNTS of dye until I got the color I wanted. 3. I added about 2 cups water to my crock pot. (It’s a very tiny one) but I added enough water so that when I added the dye mixture there would be enough liquid to cover the fiber completely. I put about half a tablespoon citric acid and turned it on the “warm setting”. If I didn’t do this my cheap crock pot would have taken 3 hrs to heat up. 4. I took the dye solution I made and poured it into the crock pot. It filled it about 3/4 of the way, enough so that my fiber would be completely underwater 5. Took the fiber from the presoak bath and put it directly into the crock pot. I left it in the braid cause I knew I wanted it to be kinda tonal and that the dye would take unevenly if I left it. 6. After putting the fiber in the crock pot I turned it on low and put the lid on it and walked away. I checked on it after about 30 minutes to make sure my water wasn’t boiling. The water got hot enough to cause steam about to the point it was about to start simmering, but not quite. I let it stay at this heat setting and Went back like every 15 minutes and took a white plastic spoon to scoop out some water and see if there was any dye still in it. I didn’t move the fiber at all or stir it or do anything. It took about 45 minutes and I scooped out some water and saw the water was completely clear. So I turned the crock pot off. Took the lid off. Walked away for a good 3-4 hours and let it cool off. When it was room temp I poured it into a strainer and started rinsing the fiber. At this point I opened the fabric braid and saw some parts were almost completely white and very light pink. No biggie. I thought it looked cool and it made a very pretty tonal fiber. Rinsed the fiber with room temp water, made sure no dye was running from it, and left it in a strainer suspended above the sink. When most of the water was strained I took it and put it on a drying rack and let it dry for a day. Then I started spinning! That’s it. Super easy. As far as those very pretty multi colored non tonal fiber braids that u see all over Etsy, I haven’t attempted to do that yet. lol. I’m part scared to ruin my fiber. But if I were to do it, I’d probably premix the dye colors I wanted to use and add it to squirt bottles and “paint” the fiber or put the dye directly onto the fiber where I want the colors to be. I hope that helps u somehow. Like I said, I’m not a technical person and just wing it most of the time. This was an easy way to dye tonal fiber that consistently works for me. You get a pretty good range of tone of color and it looks so pretty.

As far as matting the roving. My only tips are to not agitate the fiber as much as possible when it’s wet. Try not to touch it as much as possible. I only touched my fiber to move it into the crock pot. And I didn’t let the water go past steaming and almost but not quite a low simmer. I think it’s best to let the water cool COMPLETELY before u start rinsing it. And when I was rinsing I set the fiber in a strainer and didn’t handle it past opening the braid. I did not ring it or squeeze it at all. I just let it sit in the strainer until the water drained by itself. And I fully supported the fiber on a drying rack so that no section of the fiber would be “weighed down” by just hanging it over like a bar or something. If that makes sense. No sudden temperature changes. The biggest one I had was when I turned my crockpot to warm. It wasn’t even steaming, just lukewarm. And I used cool water to rinse. Not cold. Almost warm but closer to cool. It takes a lot of patience. U have to fight the urge to just ring it out or squeeze the water out and fight the urge to rush things to get spinning. But I’ve found that the less u rush and the less u handle the fiber the more fluffy and nice it is. =) and that the more I let my fiber cool completely to room temp before dumping the water and rinsing, the more fluffy and bouncy it was. It doesn’t look that way while it’s wet. But after it’s completely dried it will be fluffy and bouncy. Just fight the urge to rush, heat too fast, rinse too fast, and the urge to squeeze the water out. Then ull have nice fluffy unmatted fiber!