Overdyeing: What not to do

My friend Denise, gave me a sweater that belonged to a mutual friend before she passed away last year. It is really nice, and we are pretty sure that Jane knitted it herself, but it has a big blotch on it that is bleached out. My challenge: to cover up the spot without ruining the sweater. As you can see below, it is a pretty reddish-brown.



I decided to try and dye it with a similar color. I thought it was probably not going to work, but I had the dye and some free time over the wet holiday weekend and I decided to proceed. I now have a nice reddish-brown sweater with a slightly different color splotch. So I guess now my only option is to try and strip the color, then redye it. I've done this once before with a cotton sweater and it came out great. But wool is a whole other matter. From browsing the Pro Chem website, it's looking like I can use Thiox to remove the color. So now it will be a few weeks before I have the free time to attempt this project again. But it will be worth it in the end.



I'm still working on filling up my first bobbin on the new wheel. I have a couple of Blue Faced Leicester fleeces that I'm working on carding, so I'm using it as my test yarn. So far it's spinning up very easily. This is a wonderful fiber to spin and should make something nice.