Anyone who love/wants to/has/will/even hates dyeing is welcome, I suspect!
KoolAid is a lot like watercolor. If you mix green and pink, you’re likely to get an icky gray. If you want the pink darker, but still pinkish (raspberry) stick with warm colors.
Hi, everyone! The dyeing continues apace. Have dyed about 5 lbs. of yarn since I posted last pictures. This is one I had lots of fun with. Alum mordant, 10% WOF, Cream of Tartar, 3% WOF, Glauber’s salts, 1% WOF. Brazilwood 50% WOF. The Brazilwood had Soda Ash added to the dyebath, to make a purple (about 20 gems). (Will post later with pics of what the purple looked like unaltered). After holding temp at 180 degrees F for 30 minutes, the fiber was removed and cooled somewhat (able to touch it). I then put it in a sink of water, and poured vinegar over it, hoping for the semi-solid yarn I got. Hooray! Brazilwood is sensitive to pH, and lowering it while the yarn was still wet gave me a gorgeous batch of yarn!
DYEING IS SUCH FUN!!!
This is a separate batch of semi that I kept on the purple side:
I’m fainting that is so amazing!
Oh those are beautiful. Thanks for sharing all the info!
Overdying with indigo.
So pretty!!!
Today’s work: Madder, indigo on linen, indigooverdyed Osage orange. Weld and Osage drying inside, because I don’t want the indigo touching it.
What are you doing with all your yarns? I could see some beautiful plaids from these colors.
I first did some dyeing in the 1980s when I was in college in Northern California. It included creating an indigo vat and getting some gorgeous blues, and a hilarious experiment my partner and I did with canned beets to see if we could get any color (spectacular failure). But I wasn’t much interested in dyeing until just last summer when I started watching Chemknits YouTube videos on dyeing with food coloring. I still don’t dye too often, but this is KnitPicks Aristo Merino/cashmere/silk lace yarn that was wound on a ball winder and dyed with Wilton’s Copper icing dye, then rewound into another ball and dyed again with Wilton’s Yellow. Then I knitted it into Nim Teasdale’s beautiful Don’t Panic shawl. Since the yarn looked like ice cream with butterscotch syrup, the name of the shawl is Don’t Panic, It’s Only Butterscotch!
@SpinsterJulieB , I’m working toward a couple of craft fairs. I know what you mean about plaids! The great thing is these are all natural dyes! Who says natural is frumpy!? I will have about 150+ skeins dyed by Nov, when the craft fairs occur, so if I don’t sell out (hope I do), you might be seeing them offered for sale!
More beauties.
Oops on the extra pics. The learning curve is different with more and better choices!
. That’s to be hoped!