More to dye for...

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.

Second dye not so hot...

Emboldened by my first dye attempt, I waited patiently for the ochre dye to get here so I could dye some yarn for my niece, Soma. I'd decided on a sequence of five colors: two tones of sapphire blue, two of gold ochre, and white (undyed stretches of yarn). I applied them as follows: Blue dark, Blue light, Ochre dark, Ocher light, white, Ocher light, Ocher dark, Blue light, Blue dark, each applied for about 5 inches before stating the next color. This would have resulted on several colors appearing on each row, with a sort of mottled or zigzag pattern once knit up, rather than the spiral my first skein is making (where the colors were applied for stretches of 12-14").

In theory--on the kitchen counter--it looked good:




As you can see from the drying and hanked photo, not so good in execution, as the ochre capillaried across the white, and merged unevenly with the blue on its other side, leaving a yucky mess:



Ewwww. At least to me for whom oranges and golds are not in my preferred palate (my first skein most definitely is), and even though I love the deep sapphire blue, I didn't the greens.

Ah, well, live and learn - and dye again! This time, rather than scrap the 465 yards of sock yarn or send it off anyway, I ordered a gift certificate from Amazon for Soma (a book fiend like me, I know that it will be welcomed, even if not as personal as yarn dyed just for her), and overdyed the yarn. I pulled out the leftover blue solutions (one made with 1/2 teaspoon of the sapphire blue Jacquard powder, the other made with 1/4 teaspoon), poured it into the dye vat along with more water, vinegar and dye powder, and submerged the yarn.

I was so busy grumbling to myself about how the yarn turned out originally that I neglected to soak it once again in vinegar water before putting it into the vat. I don't know if that would have changed the uptake of the dye.



I brought the water up to under a boil, and let it steep until the water was clear. The result, once dried and wound into a cake, is sapphire blue and mostly two shades of green, depending on whether the blue soaked into the light or dark ocher. Here's the photo I took of the cake indoors under my fluorescent desk lamp:



Karen, who has been knitting for just a year now, and is still working on her first sock, decided to get in on the dyeing action, too. So, while my yarn was cooking in the microwave, she mixed up her dyes (Jacquard's Vermilion and Jet Black) and laid out her yarn.

A couple of days before, I unraveled a row of of sock in the Jaywalk pattern I'm hooked on (and that Karen is also making) and measured it, finding that it takes 41.5-42 inches to work one pattern row (*K1, M1, k8, double decrease (sl1, sl1, k1, pass slipped sts over), k8, K1, M1; rep from * to end three more times). Karen wanted one color a row, alternating black and vermilion, with a little white thrown in now and then to brighten it up a bit.

Rather than sequence dyeing like I did in both my skeins, she did hers this way:


I realized as she started applying the color that she could have vat dyed the yarn, using two vats at the same time, with the yarn in between them being the undyed 'white' yarn. Ah, well, next time.

We took care in wrapping it to keep the white yarn separate from the adjacent colors:


Even so, there was some capillary action, with the black and vermilion bleeding into the white.


(Sorry about the blur...) What is odd (and not easily seen in this photo) is that where the black bled into or otherwise came into contact with the intentionally undyed yarn, it didn't show up as black or gray. Instead, some of its component parts were present or absent, such as some milk chocolate brown smears that appeared in one area. Karen was so impatient to start applying the dyes to the yarn that she didn't do a great job of really getting the black powder mixed into solution, but still, the colors of some of the bleeds and contact areas were unexpected.

When I get around to actually knitting with my blue/green yarn, I'll post a picture here of what it looks like worked up. I rather like it in its current incarnation, but 'twill depend on what shades of green turn out to be most visible as it gets worked up into a sock.

Yesterday was a good day to dye

My apologies to Worf and the entire Klingon nation, but apparently yesterday (last night, to be exact) was a good day to dye, because I did!

I've had several skeins of KnitPick's Bare yarns on hand for months, along with a dozen jars or so of Jacquard acid dye. I've been reading various blogs and articles on how to do it, but haven't felt up to the whole experience (clearing off enough counter space, gathering all the stuff together, working up the solutions--heck, deciding which colors to use!--and getting a skein re-hanked into a much longer hank.

The hanking I did several nights ago - set up a couple of chairs 7 ft apart and wound and wound and wound.

Last night I was restless for some reason, fidgety and not into knitting or reading. So, of course, what do I do? Dye!

::snort::

I used 1/2 teaspoon of the dye powders (Turquoise, Pink, and Lilac), each in 8 oz of water, with 6.5 cc of vinegar each. Well, and George's Aloe Vera Juice, whose gallon jug looks a lot like the gallon jug of vinegar. ::sigh:: Since vinegar is the acid that makes the dye penetrate into the yarn and set, thank whatever goddesses there are that I realized my oops before I started applying the solution to the yarn!

Here's the yarn right after I applied the colors:



Here it is wrapped in heavy-duty plastic wrap prior to microwaving it (the dye requires heat to set):



Here it is in the microwave (3 minutes on, 2 minutes off, repeated 5 times):



A lot of the turquoise fell out of the yarn and got into the pink, which helped tone down the freakish pinkishness of the pink. Here it is after rinsing:



...and hanging up in the iguana room drying over night:



...and wound into a hank tonight:



Excuse me while I go drool over the sink instead of my keyboard.

Some of the articles I read in preparation for dyeing:

Dye Fingerprint (knitty.com)

Real Dye Adventures (Dave Daniels)

Jacquard Acid Dyes

I bought most of the dye-dedicated kitchen stuff (bowls, strainers, measuring cup, tongs, wooden spoon, condiment squeeze bottles) at Cash & Carry, a relatively inexpensive restaurant supply house owned by the Smart & Final company, and threw in a large plastic mixing bowl, measuring spoons, and Pyrex baking dish from my existing kitchen stuff, and a 3cc syringe from my rehabbing days. The left-over solution I'm storing in some Ball glass canning jars. I raided my CERT go bag for the mask (must be worn when working with the powders themselves), disposable gloves, plastic trash bags, and masking tape. If you're looking for metal bowls and pots to do stove-top vat dyeing, be sure to check restaurant suppliers' used section as well as thrift stores and dollar stores (Big Lots, Dollar Tree, etc.).

And now that I've exhausted myself by dyeing, I think I'll go to bed and dream of other colorways...

Update: For some reason, I kept my yarn aside, and worked on several community knitting projects (blanket squares for Sonoma Blanket Project, a preemie blanket and cap for the guild's new Hospital Stash, and a couple of Socks for Soldiers). One friend suggested I save the yarn for posterity, but I finally decided one night to dive in. I pulled a just-started third SFS sock off the needles, and cast on my yarn. The 12-14" stretches of color are apparently going to create a spiral pattern (my least favorite, as it happens), as evidenced by the first 4 inches or so - here's what the 'front' and 'back' look like:



The colors, though, are still darned yummy!

Hand-Dye, and A Missing Lizard

Several months ago, Phina Borgeson, one of our knitting guild members, offered to teach us a bit about dying yarn. We met three times this year in the evening at Canine Companions for Independence (thanks to one of our members and her knitting assistance dog), so it was perfect being able to use their kitchen, with its sinks, stoves, and microwave.

Fortunately, not a huge group turned out tonight, and so there was enough time to not feel completely rushed as we soaked our yarns, and either dyed them a single color in the stove-top pots, or hand dyed them, painting on the dyes while the hanks lay in a Pyrex dish before microwaving them.

I took some photos of the others' yarns as they were painting and dyeing them, and I'll get a page up on them sometime this week or so, along with my transcribed notes from Phina's instructions, but I thought I'd post my hank here.

We were using Paz Easter egg dyes and vinegar. Here's my hand-dye using the turquoise and hot pink, all wrapped in plastic wrap before putting it into the microwave:




Once the water runs clear after microwaving for a couple of minutes, I rinsed the hank out under hot water, carefully squeezed out the remaining water, and here it is!



I didn't get the turquoise all the way down the 'stack' of yarn so there are some color variations, from a bit a of white showing, through different intensities of the turquoise. Where the turquoise and hot pink overlapped a bit, there are touches of purple.

My favorite colors!!!

Phina said that the best time to by the Paz kits are right after Easter, when they go on sale. She also recommends splurging and buying the 9 tab kit so you get the cool colors like turquoise. On the way home, I was envisioning color junkies lurking in dim alleys, swapping Paz tabs of colors they don't like with those who have colors they do.

So, I get home, and find Mike has left a calling card for me, letting me know that he got down and went cruising after I left the house shortly after 6 PM. I, uhm, stepped over it on my way to hang my hank of still-wet yarn in the iguana room and say hey to Mike...only to find he was not there.

When in my room changing clothes, I did check my side of the bed to see if there was a tail sticking out from under the body pillow. No tail. I checked in between the blue- and white-covered duvets to see if he was laying under the white one. No Mike.

Off I went to clean up his pile (my gawd can that boy poop!), and then look for him. Not under my desk, which is where he's gone the last couple of times he decided to sleep outside of his own room. So, I picked up a flashlight and went to check under my bed. Before I got down on the floor, however, I decided to check 'his' side of the bed, just in case... And there he was! Well, there his tail was:



I flipped back the pile of duvets to check on him, and he was still quite warm. Between the feather bed on top of the mattress, the flannel sheet and flannel-covered down comforter (the blue one under the white cotton-covered down comforter), he stays warm so long that it is detectable the next morning.

So, a productive day: I learned to hand-dye and pot-dye yarn, and Mike put himself to bed (well, into my bed) on the right side for a change!