For my third dye project, I tried doing a sort of progressive vat dye. My goal was to have the hank dyed from pale to dark blue. Unfortunately, I soaked the yarn over night in a vinegar water bath, so it took the dye up more quickly than I wanted. So there was more darker blue than light, but by picking out strands and varying the length they were in the dye bath, I did end up with varying shades of blue. For the last 8" or so in the bath, I added some black dye to the blue, and so got some very deep blue. The yarn is worsted weight 100% wool (another in the Bare line from KnitPicks.com). I dyed two skeins of it, so I think I'm going to make another Midwest Midnight scarf out of it. Here's the start of the dyeing:
As I lifted sections out of the vat, I draped it over the bowl to drain, coiling the far end in another container. Since I was using Jacquard acid dye, the vat, bowl and Pyrex baking dish are all ones from my To Dye box.
The finished product:
Here's a closer look at them:Something is telling me to stick with 'my' colors - turquoise, teal,
fuchsia, purple - so the next project was some more sock yarn to donate to the upcoming
Sonoma County Knitting Guild's Sock Symposium raffle. I'll spare you all the in-process photos, and just go right to the final luscious yarn:
I made the stretches of color in this one shorter than the
first yarn I dyed. There was quite a bit of blending of the pink and turquoise in a couple of places, adding a lovely dark purple-blue in a couple of places.
I'm itching to do another one. I thought I'd use 'my' colors, but do very short stretches of color. Because the inexpensive condiment squirt bottles I'm using tend to disgorge their contents when you tip it over and some liquid drips out between the top and bottle, I thought I'd buy some less cheap ones, or get some 60cc syringes and try them instead.
Labels: dyeing