The Dye Pot

Pink Lemonade

This is the result of this weekend's experiment. We had discovered some old (and I do mean old!) packages of Crystal Light drink mix in the cupboard and Myria suggested I consider them as a possible dye. Hmm...interesting idea. As it happens, I had acquired a 4 oz skein of cream colored yarn last week at the mill shop that was just begging to be played with. So yesterday, I assembled my usual tools, the yarn and the drink mixes and...well...played!

Materials

Approximately 4 ounces light worsted weight wool (origin and exact fiber content, unknown)
Crystal Light drink mixes: 1 tub Ruby Red Grapefruit, 3 tubs Pink Lemonade
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Pink Lemonade

I washed this yarn in dish detergent and did not rinse before dyeing it. The dye was dissolved in about 3/4 cup of white vinegar and then water was added to the dye solution. This was poured carefully over the wet yarn in the crock pot. The pot was covered and turned to the low setting and the whole was allowed to work until the dye exhausted - about 2.5 hours. This one was fast!. I let the yarn cool in the crock and then washed it in shampoo/conditioner (Pantene, this time), rolled it up in a towel for maxumum moisture extraction and then hung it to dry.




This is interesting yarn. While it fellt like wool (or mostly wool) to my fingers, there was no information on the skein - no band, no fiber content - nothing but a hand written tag that said Polar Ice. So I subjected it to a burn test which told me it was substantially wool or at least animal fiber of some kind. I then proceeded with the dyeing where the rapid uptake of the color seemed to support this conclusion.

The yarn resembles twine in the way it is spun and has a lot of body. It isn't the least bit limp and would probably be excellent for cable or aran work. It isn't soft the way merino tends to be, but it isn't rough on the hands either - nice and firm. The swatch (below) is flexible but not drapey and was done over 15 stitches on size (US) 7 (4.5mm) needles.






Notes:

I had never used this particular product for dyeing before and probably won't on anything like a regular basis because it would be fairly expensive to do so. A cannister containing four tubs of powder (the amount I would use for 4 ounces of yarn) costs the equivalent of enough Kool-aid to dye 12 ounces of yarn. Unless I was after some unique effect (and I have no idea what that might be), I probably wouldn't bother.

As a dye, this stuff exhausted very quickly - faster than anything else I've used. I noted a slightly milky look to the dye bath when the color had all been absorbed into the yarn. I've read about this sometimes happening with Kool-aid, but have never actually observed it before.

The color is pleasing and, as seems to usually be the case, fast.

Colored by Robbyn on 07/24 at 11:44 AM
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Buttered Toast

That’s what I got.  This is what I started with…

Materials

Approximately 3 ounces fingering/sport weight wool (Unger Britannia Shetland)
PAAS dye tablets: 2 orange, 2 yellow
White vinegar
Water in which 5 teabags had been steeped

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Buttered Toast

I washed this yarn in dish detergent and did not rinse before dyeing it.  The dye was dissolved in a cup of white vinegar and then the tea (and some more water) was added to the dye solution.  This was poured carefully over the wet yarn in the crock pot.  The pot was covered and turned to the low setting.  Where normally I would let this work until the dye had all been absorbed - this dye never exhausted.  As happened with Cantaloupe (for which I also added tea to the dye solution), I let it run, stirring gently once in a while, and finally gave it up after the yarn had been in the pot for about 6 hours.  The solution still had some orangey color to it, but clearly the yarn wasn’t ging to take up any more of it.  I let the yarn cool in the crock and then washed it in shampoo/conditioner (Fructis if you’re curious!), rolled it up in a towel for maxumum moisture extraction and then hung it to dry.

No real need to tell you what the colors reminded me of :)  Specifically, I was dealing with an image of my grandmother’s home-made bread, perfectly toasted and smothered with butter - no margarine for Grandma!  The swatch was worked on US size 4 (3.5mm) needles over 21 stitches and a bit of the original yarn was worked at the end to provide a useful contrast image.  I will likely continue to do this when I am over-dyeing.

Notes: 

As I had never over-dyed another color, I had no idea what to expect.  When this came out of the dyebath it was dark and very nearly as unappealing as it had looked when it went in!  Once I had it washed though, and as much of the water sqeezed out of it as I could get, I could seen gold in the fiber and the yarn seemed much warmer and brighter.

As I mentioned above, the dye didn’t exhaust on this attempt.  As that has happened before when I used tea as part of the dye liquid, it’s tempting to conclude that the tea is inhibiting the yarn from taking up all of the dye.  I think it’s too soon to draw that conclusion (though it seems likely) and want to experiment a little more.  The yarn had already been dyed once and it’s old :)  Not like that’s criminal, but both those factors might have affected things as well.

The yarn was fairly rough to start with (as I generally expect Shetland yarn to be) but had a softer hand after being washed with the shampoo.conditioner combination.  Also, though I expected it to felt a little - it didn’t.  At all :)

Colored by Robbyn on 07/16 at 09:14 PM
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Welcome to The Dye Pot

This is where I chronicle my adventures in dyeing - and they really are adventures as I'm still feeling my way around. Below are thumbnails of the yarns I've played with. Click on the image you're interested in to go to the notes and procedure page for that yarn. There will be additional pages (and additional thumbnails, natch!) whenever I dye something new. Have a good time - this is a lot of fun!

Oh - and please let me know if you have comments, questions or suggestions! I'm glad to try and help :) Because of comment spam, the ability to comment shuts down 30 days after the post is uploaded. You can, however, always reach me at The Dye Pot's sister blog, The Yarnpath and, of course, any new post will be open to comment for 7 days.

Turquish Delight	Plums	Tea Rose
Cantaloupe	Second Hand Rose	Come Sail Away
Buttered Toast	Pink Lemonade	Purple Haze
Oasis Sunset	Crimson and Clover	Black Watch
Indicolite	Citrine Curry	The Jade Sea
Drake Mallard	A Bubble off Plum	Flamingo
Green Tease	Ibis	Gypsy Rose
Silver Mauve	Spring Violets	Here comes the sun!
Terra Copper	Evermoss	Maple Leaf Rag
Thunder Storm	Tea Rose for Two	Bombay
Rapunzel	Raspberry Fields Forever	Grasses
Am I Blue?	Pigeon's blood	Rusty Venture
Respighi's Pines	Cedars of Lebanon	Coraline

Colored by Robbyn on 07/04 at 11:02 PM
(5) Comments • Permalink

Come Sail Away

Materials

Approximately 6 ounces aran weight wool (Lionbrand Fisherman’s Wool)
PAAS dye tablets: 3 violet, 3 blue
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Come Sail Away

I did wash this yarn and left the detergent in it for the dye process.  No salt, however, was harmed in the dyeing of this yarn :)  Dye was dissolved in vinegar and water added to create enough solution to cover the yarn - except it didn’t :)  There was a lot more yarn than I usually dye at one time and it filled the crock.  The dye went over and around, in and out and didn’t come anywhere near covering the yarn.  So I quickly filled the bowl with tap water and poured that into the crock until the yarn was submerged.  Everything was processed on low until the dye was exhausted.  The yarn, after cooling, was washed in dish detergent, rinsed, towelled and hung to dry.

The colors in this remind me of sunset on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, where my family vacationed when I was a kid.  There’s slightly less than 6 ounces of it and that’s not going to go terribly far, but I want to do something really special with it.  The swatch was worked on size 8 (US) needles.

Notes:  I had been aiming for a solid blue-violet but after the dye tablets had dissolved, the dye in the bowl looked very blue, medium dark, and showed very little red presence at all.  I shrugged mentally, decided I could live with the color, and proceeded to pour the dye over the yarn in the crock pot.  It didn’t, of course, hit all of the yarn nor did the liquid completely cover the yarn so I quickly added more water.  When the water hit the parts of the yarn that had absorbed some of the dye it washed away the color - except for the reds (which turned out to be there after all!) leaving a pink color in the yarn!  After getting the liquid level right, I stirred everything together (gently, of course), set the crock pot on low and went and did some last minute grocery shopping.

When I got home, I checked to make sure the yarn had absorbed all the dye (it had), turned the pot off and let it cool.  From what I was looking at the top of the crock, it looked as though the purple had established a presence and what I could see looked very close to the blue-violet I had originally had in mind.  Imagine my surprise when I lifted it out to be washed and saw all kinds of colors running through the hank ranging from pink/purple to blue to blue/green! 

I want to try this “technique” (fortuitous accident!) again, with a little more deliberation and planning as to where the colors are placed before adding enough water to cover the yarn.  I’m also wondering about doing this with an already colored yarn.  You know - just to see what happens!

Again, as before with the LB FIsherman’s wool, there was no felting.  However, as I did the final wash with dish soap rather than a shampoo/conditioner kind of thing, the yarn was still a bit rough.

Colored by Robbyn on 07/03 at 02:58 AM
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