The Dye Pot

Green Tease

This is the third dyed batch of "rescued" wool. The first was A Bubble off Plum (click on the yarn name to see this post which will show you what the yarn's original color looked like). It's an almost chartreuse kind of green tea/spring green. I hated it when it first came out of the dye pot, but as it hung in the window drying, it began to grow on me :)





Materials

Approximately 5.5 oz chunky weight, 70% lambswool - 20% angora - 10% nylon yarn, rescued from a thrift shop sweater.
7 tea bags
1/2 oz. Wilton's icing dye - Yellow
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Green Tease

This was business as usual except for two things. I used tea as the base of the dye bath and I completely forogt to add any vinegar :) The yarn did take up color in what, as nearly as I can tell, is a permanent arrangement so I'm guessing that there was enough tannic acid in the tea to do the job.






Notes:

There's not much to note here except for the color. I have never been a big "green" fan (except in nature - nature wears it well, I think!) and especially not of yellow-greens so when I took this out of the pot I thought, "Well, it will make warm hats even if it does look like the dog's breakfast.". But I had time to get used to it over the few days to took to dry and I began to get more comfortable with the color.

By the time I sat down to swatch it, I was actually beginning to like it quite a lot. It's still not a color I could wear, but I can appreciate it never the less :)

Colored by Robbyn on 01/19 at 12:28 PM
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Flamingo

This is the second dyed batch of "rescued" wool. The first was A Bubble off Plum (click on the yarn name to see this post which will show you what the yarn's original color looked like). It's a little...erm...flamboyant? But I wanted to absolutely sure all the gray/blue/green of the original was changed and I went a little overboard with the dye :)





Materials

Approximately 7 oz chunky weight, 70% lambswool - 20% angora - 10% nylon yarn, rescued from a thrift shop sweater.
Kool-aid: 5 pkgs Strawberry, 2 pkgs Watermelon-cherry, 2 pkgs Orange
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Flamingo

The procedure was pretty much the standard, soaking, washing before-hand with dish detergent, dissolving the dye in water and vinegar, pouring the dye bath into the crock pot, adding the yarn, heating (on high) until the dye was all absorbed (very quickly this time - just over an hour), cooling, washing again with shampoo/conditioner, rinsing and rinsing and rinsing again, towel roll up for moisture extraction and hanging to dry.






Notes:

First of all, 7 oz of yarn is really too much to be dyeing in a 5 qt crock pot. This stuff was packed and there was no sloshing/settling room at all. Not, of course, that a wool yarn should be sloshed exactly, but it should have had more breathing room than it had. For future reference, 5 oz should really be the limit.

That said, the yarn didn't come out too badly - no thanks to me :) It ranges from a medium coral to an extremely vivid orange/red. As with the previous batch, I got a variegated effect without trying. At this point, I'm chalking that up to the yarn itself and whatever processing it received in its former life - mainly because I don't know what else to ascribe the variegation to :) As with the previous batch which was dyed from the rescued yarn, there was a slight bit of felting - nothing serious and nothing that impaired the use of the yarn.

I also used more Kool-aid than I usually would have for this kind of weight. Ordinarily I would use I packet per ounce of yarn. This time, because I wanted to make sure none of the original color was evident, I went overboard a bit. I can't say that it hurt anything and the bright bits are very colorful indeed so there may be something to using a little more dye to boost the saturation some.

I need to find a good quantity of undyed yarn so I can do a series of experiments to see just how the yarn is affected by x quantity of dye and how much dye I can add before the yarn stops taking up any more color. I'm suspecting that will vary with the color as I've already had dye projects that wouldn't entirely take up blue dye.

I feel like a mad scientist here :) MWA-HAHAHAHAHAHA.....

Colored by Robbyn on 01/08 at 12:27 PM
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A Bubble off Plum

This yarn is the result of purchasing a thrift shop sweater for $1, taking the seams out and frogging the sweater. It seemed worth the work as the yarn is (according to the garment's label) 70% Lambswool, 20% Angora and 10% Nylon. It is also very thick - 7 wraps per inch which puts it, I think, into the very bulky or chunky category. It was originally a very pale blue/grey/green color - as below.





This is intended pretty much for Dulaan knitting, being so thick, soft and warm, and I thought I could enliven it a bit by over dyeing it. This was the result of the first batch - about 6 oz.

Materials

Approximately 6 ounces of chunky wool/angora/nylon (see above for proportions).
5 packets grape Kool-aid
1 packet watermelon-cherry Kool-aid
Approximately 1/8 tsp Wilton's icing dye, Sky Blue
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock-pot

Colorfast?

Yes (some blue bled out in the post dyeing wash but the yarn eventually rinsed clear)

Color name

A Bubble off Plum





When the yarn was wet, the color was fairly pronounced and while I wasn't trying for a variegated yarn, it looked like that was what I was going to get :) In the pot, the colors looked like summer plums - the big red/purple ones and the little dusty blue ones. It appeared much lighter when dry - hence the name :)





Process

The process was pretty standard for this except that I pre-washed the yarn - not something I often do. The only other thing I did differently was to add the yarn to the dye bath rather than pouring the dye bath over the yarn. Otherwise it was business as usual: soak/wash the yarn, mix the dye, put the dye bath in the crock pot, add the yarn (and 6 oz of chunky yarn really fills a 5 qt crock pot!), stir, cover and turn the crock pot to high.

When the color was exhausted, the pot was turned off, the yarn left to cool and the yarn was washed and rinsed (many, many times to wash out the residual blue) and then rolled in a towel and hung to dry.






Notes:

An odd thing happened during the dye process. I wouldn't call it fulling (Or felting) exactly because the yarn didn't stick to itself in the hank and unwound as easily as it had frogged. But the plies of the yarn itself somehow became...erm...less individual. Before the yarn was dyed, I could have separated the plies - and did - to see how many there were and what the consistency of the yarn was. Afterwards, it was as though all the plies had become one piece. I had not taken any particular care with the yarn as the label had indicated that it was washable and the sweater had clearly been washed several times. However, the yarn came through nicely, other than being somewhat more solid when it came out than when it went in! Even beforehand, it was a dense rather than a lofty yarn.

It is lovely, soft stuff to knit with - the feel is just heavenly. In fact, the reason there isn't a picture of the yarn in the hank is because I couldn't wait to wind it and start knitting with it. I'd prefer the color to be a bit more intense, but I have an idea of how to proceed towards that end - and I've got three more big hanks of this stuff hanging in my closet. Looks like I've got three scalps worth of pale green dreadlocks in there!

Colored by Robbyn on 01/01 at 10:20 PM
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