The Dye Pot

Pigeon’s Blood

Materials

Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud (100% baby alpaca), lace weight. 100 grams, Iris color
PAAS dye tablets: 6 red
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Pigeon's Blood

Soaked the yarn in tepid water (in the crock) and dissolved the dye tablets in the vinegar (in a separate container, of course!). Removed the yarn from the soak water and added the dye, stirring to mix. Added the yarn to the dye bath and set the crock pot to high.





I had three hanks of this originally and have dyed one previously (see Thunder Storm). I hauled the other two hanks out earlier this week and decided that their original lavender-grey wasn't going anywhere and some spiffing up was definitely in order. That, of course, came in the form of red dye :)





This is the original yarn. I've dyed this baby alpaca before and always had great results with it. It's absolutely sinfully soft yarn - in fact it you didn't know better, you might think you were working with cashmere. It's just lovely stuff - whether you're knitting or dyeing - a pleasure to work with and use :)

Notes: There were no real surprises here except that I used half again as much dye as I would ordinarily for 100 grams of yarn - and the yarn had no problem taking up all the color. The exceedingly rich color is a real pleasure to behold and I am keeping myself entertained, thinking about how I can use this and what lovely things it will make!

Colored by Robbyn on 03/14 at 07:23 AM
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Am I Blue?

Materials

Nomis Wolle, worsted weight - about 200 grams
PAAS Easter egg dye tablets: 4 blue, 4 purple
6 tbls citric acid crystals
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Am I Blue?

This time I increased the citric acid component - 3 tbls in the soak water and 3 tbls in the dye solution - and then followed the usual procedure. Soak the yarn, mix the dye, add dye to the water in the crock pot, place yarn in dye bath and turn heat to high. Cover and leave until dye is exhausted - about 3 hours in this case. Let yarn cool, wash, rinse, roll in towel and hang to dry.





Notes:

This is as close as I ever gotten to a real blue in any of my dyeing efforts. It's the kind of color I was hoping for last year when I was dying yarn for this shawl. It was also a surprise because I had been going for this colorway which I had reasonably duplicated here (scroll down a bit).

I used the same dyes in the same proportions and the same procedure. The difference was that I was using citric acid this time instead of vinegar and my best guess is that the pH of the dye bath was different - resulting in different colors coming to the fore.

It's a fascinating lesson on what happens under varying circumstances. I guess if I want to be able to reproduce colors, not only am I going to have to track dyes (types and amounts/proportions) but pH as well.

Where does a non-scientist obtain litmus paper?

Colored by Robbyn on 01/23 at 03:00 PM
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Grasses

Materials

Nomis Wolle, worsted weight - about 100 grams
Knitpicks Peruvian Highland Bare, fingering weight - about 50 grams
PAAS Easter egg dye tablets: 5 green, 1 yellow
4 tbls citric acid crystals
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Grasses

Experimented just a bit with the citric acid crystals by adding 2 tbls to the soak water as well as 2 tbls to the dye solution - otherwise, pretty much standard procedure. Soak the yarn, mix the dye, add dye to the water in the crock pot, place yarn in dye bath and turn hat to high. Cover and leave until dye is exhausted - about 2 hours in this case. Let yarn cool, wash, rinse, roll in towel and hang to dry.





Notes:

This is the first time, dyeing something with a green component, that the dye completely exhausted. I assume that the citric acid (as it's the only thing I'm doing differently) is responsible but, as a friend quite correctly pointed out to me, it could be that the pH (level of acidity) is different and that different colors react in various ways to different pHs. Though the yarns are different, the end results were nearly identical. See this post (scroll down) for the result of another effort with these same two yarns and a different set of colors.





I had been hoping for something a bit more muted than this. I think that would have required a bit of red or orange which I didn't used in this lot. That said, the more I look at this fresh, springy color, the better I like it :) The swatch sample is from a hat I crocheted with this yarn. The hat has been frogged though, so I can use the yarn - and it's happy hue - elsewhere :)

Colored by Robbyn on 01/23 at 02:40 PM
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Raspberry Fields Forever

Materials

Knitpicks Bare Peruvian Highland Wool, bulky weight. about 200 grams
PAAS Easter egg dye tablets: 4 red, 2 purple
2 tbls citric acid crystals
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Raspberry Fields Forever

Soaked the yarn for about twenty minutes in the crock pot in cold water. Added 2 tbls of citric acid crystals to a cup of cold water, stirring until everything was completely dissolved. Then I added the dye tablets - which fizzed so energetically that there was some over flow :) When the yarn was soaked through, I removed it from the crock (gently squeezing out as much of the water as I could) and set it aside. I added the dye to the water in the crock pot and stirred it up to make sure everything mixed well. Then I put the yarn into the dye path, covered the crock and set it to high. The dye was exhausted after about two hours, so I turned everything off, removed the lid to the pot and let it cool down. Standard wash (dish detergent) and rinses. Rolled the yarn in a towel and hung to dry in the kitchen window.





Notes:

This was the first time I had ever used citric acid. I had some available that I had obtained for on old experiment in bath bombs but hadn't used it as the acid of a dye bath. I couldn't figure out how much (or little) to use and so the jar sat there on my closet floor, getting dusty.

I finally did try it this time because I was rabid to dye and I had run out of white vinegar :)

Although the emphatic scent of vinegar doesn't bother me, I must say it was nice that the kitchen didn't smell like a pickle factory :) In fact the citric acid didn't seem to smell of anything at all - at least not to me - but I don't have the most sensitive nose in the world.

The dyeing went quickly - only took about 2 hours - and the color is good. There was some very slight crocking when I washed it, but by the final rinse, there wasn't any more color coming out of the yarn; I believe the color is fast at this point.

I think I will try using a little more citric acid for the next attempt (say, 3 tbls instead of 2) and see if that takes care of the fugitive color because, aside of that minor issue, things came out very well indeed.

Colored by Robbyn on 01/02 at 10:48 AM
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Rapunzel

Materials

Knitpicks Bare Peruvian Highland Wool, bulky weight. about 200 grams
PAAS dye tablets: 1.5 orange, 1.5 yellow
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Rapunzel

Soaked the yarn for about twenty minutes in a bowl of room temperature water and, in a separate container, dissolved the dye in about 3/4 cup of white vinegar. When the yarn was thoroughly wetted, I removed it from the water and added the dye to the bath, stirring to mix. The dye bath was then transferred to the crock pot and the yarn added to the bath. A little more water was added to the bath (so that the yarn would be covered), the crock was covered and the pot set to high.





Notes:

I was going for a pale (but not pastel - not a baby yarn color) gold. For 200 grams of yarn, I would normally use 6 - 8 color tablets, Here, I only used 3 all together and still managed to achieve a brighter color than I was aiming for. Next time I'll try even less dye and maybe add a little (tiny bit) of something else to mute things a bit.






Never the less, the color I did get is gorgeous, not at all eye searing, and exceedingly warm and cheerful :) Interestingly enough, one hank is very slightly lighter than the other. I believe that happened as a result of adding water to the dye bath after the yarn had been placed. The skein at the top of the pot, essentially, was in a less concentrated part of the bath while the skein on the bottom was in a more concentrated region. Something to remember going forward.

Colored by Robbyn on 12/21 at 09:02 AM
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Bombay

Materials

Knitpicks Bare Peruvian Highland Wool, fingering weight. about 100 grams
PAAS dye tablets: 1 red, 1 orange, 1 yellow
6 teabags (regular, ordinary black tea)
White vinegar
Water

Method

Stove top

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Bombay

I used the stove top this time - one color in each of three jars - in order to get a variegated result in less than three days :) First I made the tea (tea bags and boiling water) in a big glass bowl with enough water to cover the yarn. When it had cooled, I soaked the yarn in the tea for about 45 minutes. Then I placed a couple of tablespoons of vinegar in the bottom of each of three jars and added a dye tablet to each one. When the dye was completely dissolved, I filled the jars about two-thirds full with cold tea. Then I added the yarn - approximately a third of the skein folded into each jar. The jars went into a strainer which went into a kettle of water. The whole kit-and-caboodle went on the stove where it simmered for about 2 hours - until the dye exhausted. Then the heat was turned off and everything was left to cool overnight.





I have only dyed on the stove top once before and that was the Citrine Curry but it was for the same reason - to get a multi-colored yarn without a prolonged process.





The swatch was done on size 7 US (4.0 mm ) needles.

Notes:

I have used tea before as a muting agent, particularly with warm colors, so that the colors wouldn't wind up looking too bright. Previously, I had used the tea as part of the dye bath but I had never soaked the yarn in it before. I wanted to see if that made a difference. It did, though it was small. In both the yellows and the oranges, the muting effect was slightly more intense than before (compared, say, to the yellows and oranges in the Citrine Curry.

I had hoped I was dying a shawl yarn here, but the colors are more intense than I had hoped for. I'm trying a lace scarf with it and rather liking the results. Also, the yarn is a little rougher, coarser than I had hoped. I will probably keep the rest of the fingering weight for dyeing experiments and order pure merino when I ready to make the next shawl.

Colored by Robbyn on 08/23 at 08:56 PM
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Tea Rose for Two

Materials

Knitpicks Bare Peruvian Highland Wool, worsted weight. about 100 grams
PAAS dye tablets: 4.5 red, 1.5 purple
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Tea Rose for Two

Pretty much the standard procedure - soak the yarn in cool water, dissolve the dyes in vinegar, dye in crock pot, yarn into dye bath and crock pot set to high.





This is exactly the same combination of dye in the same proportions as was used for Tea Rose and the results are very similar. The slight differences can be chalked up to two things: The yarn is different (Tea Rose was a merino fingering weight) and I had been hoping for a graduated color take-up which totally didn't happen :)





The swatch was done on size 7 US (4.0 mm ) needles.

Notes: I had wanted to go for a variegated yarn - one that went from deep rose, to medium pink, to pale pink. With this in mind, I put a third on the hank into the dye pot to take up what I hoped would be the greatest part of the dye. I left that for about half an hour before slipping another thirs of the hank into the bath. Another half hour and then I added the rest of the wool. This was clearly not quite the way to go about it because there's very little variation in final product - though there is some. The yarn isn't a bad color(s) though and will be perfectly usable. So I'm going to have to rethink this variegated/graduated color thing and see if I can come up with a better way of managing it. Maybe a stove-top method would be a better way to go? I'll let you know :)

Colored by Robbyn on 07/27 at 10:16 AM
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Thunder Storm

Materials

Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud, lace weight. 50 grams, Iris color
PAAS dye tablets: 1/2 blue, 1/2 purple
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Thunder Storm

Pretty much the standard procedure - soak the yarn in cool water, dissolve the dyes in vinegar, dye in crock pot, yarn into dye bath and crock pot set to high.





This was the result of a yarn I already had in a color that didn't do much for me. The original looked like this:





I had been looking at some other lace and fingering weight yarns in the blue to violet range and remembered that I had a fair amount of this Knitpicks yarn. The baby alpaca is just gorgeous, soft, silky yarn but the color didn't work with the others. So I decided to take one hank and gently over dye it - to see what happened. It already leaned in the right direction, it just needed a little more nudging :)





The swatch was done on size 5 US (3.75 mm ) needles.

I even indulged in some lace knitting for the swatch figuring that was probably how this yarn should be shown. While I think it came out reasonably well, I'd be embarrassed to tell you how long it took me to manage it.

Notes: I have dyed this yarn before. Second Hand Rose also started its life as part of the Alpaca Cloud line, color - Sunlight Heather. This yarn dyes beautifully and comes out of the process as silky and glossy as it was when it went in. This particular color, Thunder Cloud, is interesting and does go with the other yarns I had been looking at earlier - in fact it goes very well. But I wish it were a little brighter :)

Colored by Robbyn on 07/08 at 08:37 PM
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Maple Leaf Rag

Materials

Paton's Merino wool, worsted weight. 50 grams, natural color
PAAS dye tablets: 2 red, 1 orange. 1/2 purple
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Maple Leaf Rag

Standard Procedure - Soaked the yarn in cool water, dissolved the dye in white vinegar, added the dye solution to about 4 quarts of water, mixed and poured into the crock pot. Added the soaked yarn (soak time - about 30 minutes), stirred gently to acquaint all the yarn with the dye bath, put the lid on and turned the crock pot to the high setting.





I had hoped the presence of purple would help to tone down the brilliance of the red-orange. All I can say is that I keep trying to imagine what the yarn would look like if there hadn't been any purple at all :) Green might have been a better option for muting the color, but the chances of winding up with something muddy and unappealing would have gone up too, I think.





The swatch was done on size 9 US (5.5 mm) needles.

Notes: Like a couple of the previous yarns, this too used almost twice as much dye as I would normally use for 50 grams of yarn - and this is nothing if not saturated! Whee! However, despite its gregariousness, I like it. In fact taken together (though it wasn't intentional) this color along with the previous three (Evermoss, Terra Copper and Here Comes the Sun!) seem to present a classic autumn palette.

I love fall :)

Colored by Robbyn on 06/07 at 07:21 PM
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Evermoss

Materials

Paton's Merino wool, worsted weight. 50 grams, natural color
PAAS dye tablets: 3 green, 1/2 red
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Evermoss

Soaked the yarn in cool water, dissolved the dye in white vinegar, added the dye solution to about 4 quarts of water, mixed and poured into the crock pot. Added the soaked yarn (soak time - about 45 minutes), stirred gently to acquaint all the yarn with the dye bath, put the lid on and turned the crock pot to the high setting.





In this case, the red was used to keep the green from screaming too loudly :) I didn't want a Kelly, St. Patrick's Day green, but something more likely to be found in the woods. As has happened before with greens, the dye didn't completely exhaust though I left the heat on the bath for about 6 hours. As with the Terra Copper, this is more dye than I would normally use for 50 grams of yarn but I wanted a solid, saturated color.





The swatch was done on size 9 US (5.5 mm) needles.

Notes: This isn't bad, if you like greens, but is a little drabber than I was aiming for. Maybe that's the wrong word as it seems to carry connotations of lifeless and dull :) I don't think this color is either of those things so maybe, rather than being drab it's really just muted? That's it - it's muted! Heh... And whatever I decide to knit with it can always be brightened a bit with a small application of Here Comes the Sun!

Colored by Robbyn on 06/05 at 07:33 PM
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Terra Copper

Materials

Paton's Merino wool, worsted weight. 50 grams, natural color
PAAS dye tablets: 2 orange, 1 red, 1/2 purple
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Terra Copper

Soaked the yarn in cool water, dissolved the dye in white vinegar, added the dye solution to about 4 quarts of water, mixed and poured into the crock pot. Added the soaked yarn (soak time - about 45 minutes), stirred gently to acquaint all the yarn with the dye bath, put the lid on and turned the crock pot to the high setting.





The use of 3 1/2 tablets of dye is more than I would normally use for 50 grams of yarn. However, I wanted a really intense, saturated color and so decided to go a little overboard by nearly doubling the quantity of dye. It did take a while for the dyebath to exhaust - close to 6 hours - but eventually the liquid cleared.





The swatch was done on size 9 US (5.5 mm) needles.

Notes: This is much closer to the color I was aiming for with Here Comes the Sun!. This color is fun and vibrant without looking garish (well, maybe it's a little bright!) and I think a slight muting (maybe using strong tea as a base liquid rather than plain water?) would make it absolutely perfect. Just, please don't call it pumpkin. I'd have to shoot you and that would make us both unhappy :)

Colored by Robbyn on 06/03 at 08:42 PM
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Here Comes the Sun!

Materials

Paton's Merino wool, worsted weight. 50 grams, natural color
PAAS dye tablets: 2 yellow, 1/4 purple
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Here comes the sun!

I put the yarn in tepid water to soak. Then I dropped the dye tablets into about 3/4c of white vinegar - this is more vinegar than you actually need to effect the dyeing process, but it won't hurt anything :) I squeezed most of the water out of the yarn (soak time - about 20 minutes) and set it aside. I added the dye solution to the soak water, stirred until water and dye were thoroughly mixed and then poured it into the crock pot. Then I added the yarn to the dye bath, put the lid on the crock and set the temperature gauge to high. It took about 70 minutes for the yarn to exhaust the dye.





I hadn't tried dyeing with the Paton's merino before but it was a pleasant experience. It didn't full even a little bit (as Lionbrand's Fisherman's Wool frequently does). didn't compact down, didn't get fuzzy and took the dye very nicely. This may be the first time I've tried the Paton's, but it won't be the last.





The swatch was done on size 9 US (5.5 mm) needles.

Notes: Aside of how nice the yarn turned out to be, the only surprise here was the end color. I had been aiming for something in the copper-to-terra cotta range and when it came out of the crock pot, I could see I had missed it by a mile :) Turns out that while I had intended to use orange as the primary color, what I grabbed was yellow. Go figure! Still, it's a very cheerful and pleasant color without being too, terribly eye-watering and will make a great accent color for any number of projects.

Colored by Robbyn on 06/02 at 03:10 PM
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Spring Violets

Materials

Approximately 3 ounces Blauband sock yarn (80% wool, 20% nylon)
PAAS dye tablets: 2 blue, 1 violet
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Spring Violets

Soaked the yarn in tepid water, dissolved the dye in vinegar and water, poured dye bath into the crock pot and put yarn in dye bath, setting the crock to high. The dye took less than 2 hours to exhaust - this was a surprisingly quick job. The crock pot was turned off and the yarn left to cool. Then the yarn was washed and rinsed thoroughly and hung to dry.






This was another over dye of a color that I just finally decided I didn't much care for. The original color (as you can see above) isn't bad, but I wanted something with a little more "oomph" and that didn't resemble Victorian mourning quite so much :)





This yarn was oddly fuzzy and stuck to everything - my sweater, my fingers (which are a bit dry, admittedly), and itself. It was a real job to wind the skein on the swift and even more of a job to wind the balls once the yarn was dry. I will say, though, the yarn has a really nice, soft feel to it. It is also very fine - finer than I generally think of for sock yarn.





The swatch was done on size 1 US (2,25 mm) needles and could easily have been worked on size 0 US (2 mm) or even finer. My hands are up to the task but unfortunately my eyes aren't so this will probably be used doubled, or stranded with something else.

Notes: The yarn dried to an interesting combination of colors. Predominant is a muted blue-violet. There are also bits of blue-gray and muted magenta. As far as the crock pot goes, this has been the fastest job yet - no idea why :) I have some Schaeffer Anne in a royal blue...





...(on the right) that is also too fine a yarn for me to work with comfortably and I may put the two together to see what happens :)

Colored by Robbyn on 03/31 at 11:55 AM
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Silver Mauve

Materials

Approximately 3.5 ounces KFI Cashmerino (55% merino wool, 33% microfiber, 12% cashmere)
PAAS dye tablets: 2.5 violet, 1 red
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Silver Mauve

Washed the yarn in tepid water and dish detergent, dissolved the dye in vinegar and water, poured dye bath into the crock pot and put yarn in dye bath. Initially I set the pot to low because of the microfiber content (more about that below, in the notes) but turned it to high after about 20 minutes. The dye took about 2 hours to exhaust. The crock pot was turned off and the yarn left to cool. Then the yarn was rinsed thoroughly and hung to dry.






This was an overdye of a color that I liked at first but came to dislike over time. It was a very pale orchid and I finally decided there was no harm in dyeing it to see what happened.





The fly in the ointment, if there was one, was the microfiber. Having never dyed it before I had no idea what to expect. This, to me, is a real problem with yarn labeling. The word microfiber describes a yarn which is the result of a specific production method and which is less than 1.0 denier (the weight in grams of a 9000 meter length of the fiber). For example, the yarn in a nylon stocking maybe 10 - 15 denier and consist of 3 or 4 plys. A 15 denier strand of microfiber would be made up of somewhere around 30 filaments of microfiber. This is part of the reason microfiber is so soft. (See this article, Microfibers: Functional Beauty, for more information on microfiber.)

The problem comes in - at least for a would-be dyer - when something is labeled simply microfiber without any further clarification as to what the actual fiber content is. It will be synthetic, or at least synthetically produced (like rayon, for example) and is usually polyester or nylon, sometimes acrylic. Polyester and acrylic won't dye the way wool will - but nylon will so knowing the fiber content is critical. Some ball bands will say "Nylon microfiber" or "Acrylic microfiber" but many just say "microfiber" so dyeing such yarn is a bit of a crap shoot.






Notes: I knew going in that there was a risk involved as I didn't know what the microfiber part of the yarn actually was. I gambled that there was a pretty good chance that it was nylon which would take the dye pretty much as well as the wool and cashmere components did.

And the yarn did take the dye but the final color is much lighter than the dye bath was. The bath was a strong, deep grape color (graple, Myria called it) but the yarn is significantly lighter than that - more like a lilac than a grape :) - with occasional segues into and out of pale gray. I had thought the microfiber content was likely nylon, but I'm not sure that's the case. All the same, the yarn is interesting and certainly useable :)

A final note about the Cashmerino...

The yarn is extremely soft and while much of it had been rolled, used and frogged, it all sprang back to its original form during the dyeing so it is also quite resilient. And while the cashmere content might make you think this is too luxurious for ordinary projects, it is easily washable and so relatively easy care. But save it for things that benefit from the extreme softness or that need especial drape. Body isn't it's best quality :)

Colored by Robbyn on 03/18 at 03:41 PM
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Gypsy Rose

Materials

Approximately 5 ounces sportweight wool, 90% merino, 10% nylon (according to the label)
PAAS dye tablets: 6 red, 1 violet
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Gypsy Rose

Soaked the yarn in tepid water (no detergent or soap), dissolved the dye in vinegar and water, placed yarn in crock pot, poured dye bath in and set oh high. The dye took about 6 hours to exhaust and the yarn was left to cool overnight. Then it was washed, rolled in a towel and stood on to squeeze out as much poisture as possible and then hung to dry.





If you look closely, you'll see that the ball on the upper left isn't the same as the other two. The dyeing produced an almost marled effect leading me to suspect that the fiber composition of this particular ball of yarn is different from the other two (there were three balls all together) regardless of all three ball bands being the same and giving identical information. Such are the surprises to be had when diving into the bargain bin :)






Notes: The swatch was done with the solid color yarn.

The color is very similar to an early experiment, Second Hand Rose which was a cream/pale yellow lace weight alpaca. While this yarn looked like any other ordinary cream colored yarn, possibly there was a yellow dye component already in it, rather than it just being a natural color...you know...naturally :)

This yarn had an odd, almost plasticky feel when it was wet and took, relatively speaking, a lot of time to take up all the dye. It's interesting to get two very different results from a single dye lot and is, perhaps, something to remember in the future. That is, it might be something to do intentionally rather than accidentally with an array of yarns of different fiber compositions in order to get a related, but not identical, range of colors.

The yarn has wonderful body and is very springy :) It made a wonderful swatch that was as vibrant to the fingers as it was to the eye - as did its sister yarn, Ibis (same brand, slightly different style) which is currently being worked into a very bright pair of socks :)

As this was bargain bin stuff, I don't expect to run into it again and couldn't find anything about the brand (Chabotte) on line.

Colored by Robbyn on 03/09 at 01:18 PM
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