The Dye Pot

Coraline

This was an anonymous cream colored (i.e. undyed) wool that I picked up in a bag sale a while back. Most of it was used up in an afghan project but I had three partial balls left - about 162 grams (no idea about yardage). And I also had these cool new dyes to explore, see? Problem is, the extra dyes in the new acquisitions weren't labeled and the best you can tell from looking at the tablets is "kind of pink", "orangish" and "mostly blue" or "sort of green". I took a shot :)

Materials

162 grams, worsted/aran weight, anonymous wool.
Easter egg dye tablets - 6 pink, 1 orange
White vinegar

Method

Standard Crock Pot method.

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Coraline

I'm not entirely sure that all the yarn is the same brand and type. A small bit of it seems softer, more loosely spun but there's no way to be sure. It did all dye up nicely, so I guess the idea will be to use up that suspect bit by itself and not try to combine it with the other two balls.





Notes: I know I've babbled often about consistent and even color. Hand dyeing doesn't seem to be the pathway to that - at least not the way I do it :) This yarn is more varied than most with hot pinks, medium roses, almost-tangerines and peaches The shades are subtle enough that looking at the yarn from a couple of feet away, you might not notice. The more closely you examine it though, the more colors you see. It's pretty neat!

Colored by Robbyn on 02/22 at 03:16 PM
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Cedars of Lebanon

A while back, I acquired a lot of Knitpicks Palette in their discontinued "Wood" color with the idea of working it into a circular shawl. While I still want to do the shawl, the actual work has been shelved for the unspecified future. And because yarn never lies quietly and behaves itself for me, I wound up experimenting with dyeing some of it.





Materials

100 grams, fingering weight, Peruvian wool (Knitpicks Palette, Wood)
Easter egg dye tablets - 6 purple
White vinegar

Method

Standard Crock Pot method.

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Cedars of Lebanon

The original shade of the yarn was a warm brownish-orange - rather like the ubiquitous maple furniture sets of the '50s. It was actually quite a bit more attractive than I had anticipated, though I had originally purchased it with intent to dye. In fact I had also purchased some burgundy icing dye for that purpose and will probably give that a try on some of the rest of this yarn.

I'm not sure what prompted me to try purple (undiluted purple at that!) on an almost orange yarn. I remember thinking that the result would either be interesting or horrible. As luck would have it, interesting it was :)






Notes: While the above picture seems to indicated a fairly uniform color, that's not really the result. It's a grey day here and I couldn't get away from using the flash - so I blame that. The yarn evolved from its original (uniform) orange-maple color into something much richer and more complicated. It has browns, auburns and shades of both red and purple. It is not wildly vareigated, but the color shifts are clear when you look for them. I am not a fan of "browns" at all but this yarn and the subsequent dyeing experiments I've done with it have certainly opened my eyes to the possibilities. This stuff is, to my eye, absolutely gorgeous - something I never thought I'd say about any brownish thing.

Colored by Robbyn on 02/12 at 12:48 PM
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Respighi’s Pines

This is the last three balls of a superwash bulky I picked up some time ago. Most of the lot went into a gentleman's scarf last winter (the color seemed appropriate) and when I ran across the remainder in the stash last week, my immediate thought was, "Dye fodder!"



This is a French yarn, Chanteleine Goliath, about which I can find nothing on line :)

Materials

150 grams superwash bulky - 100% wool (Chanteleine Goliath, palest taupe)
Easter egg dye tablets - 6 green, 1 yellow, 1 orange
White vinegar

Method

Standard Crock Pot method.

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Respighi's Pines

The green dye didn't fully exhaust - which seems to be perfectly normal for green dye. I let the crock pot run for several hours to make sure the yarn had taken up all the color it could and then went through the usual wash, rinse and dry routine.





There's no swatch yet, but I will post a picture of whatever I use this to make when it's complete - probably a hat or scarf for charity. There's only just over 200 yards of yarn here and I don't want to give up any length for a swatch!

Notes: Nothing to speak of; this was pretty straight-forward.

Colored by Robbyn on 02/07 at 08:31 AM
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Rusty Venture

I wanted to make some fingerless gloves for my aunt but didn't have appropriate yarn available. I wanted to do a modified version of the Dana Victoria mitts which involves complex patterning - so a variegated yarn was right out. Unfortunately, all the fingering weight I had was multi-colored. So that meant dyeing something. I acquired two balls of Patons Kroy sock yarn in natural cream and started plotting :)

I was staying with my father, following his pre-Christmas surgery, and didn't have access to my usual tools and materials - so I found ways to make do with what was available and what I could easily procure at the supermarket.
Materials

100 grams fingering weight sock yarn - 75% wool/25% nylon (Patons Kroy, natural cream)
Kool-aid - 1 packet each Strawberry and Orange, 2 packets of black cherry
Six teabags steeped in about a quart of boiling water and allowed to cool a bit

Method

Stove top

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Rusty Venture

I soaked the yarn as usual. Because this is a superwash item, I felt free to knead and squeeze as necessary to get it thoroughly wet so the soak didn't really take any time. I combined the kool-aid colors with the tea and put this mixture into a pasta pot (you know - one of the kind that has a colander insert?) along with enough water to cover the yarn. Between the citric and ascorbic acids in the kool-aid and the tannic acid contribution of the tea, there was more than enough to get the dye to stick to the yarn so I didn't bother adding any vinegar this time. Then I added the yarn, stirred everything so that all the yarn and the dye made good contact and then turned the heat on. When the pot came to a boil, I turned the heat down to a medium simmer and let it go. It took about an hour for the dye to fully exhaust - a bit quicker than my usual crock pot procedure. Then the yarn was washed, wrapped in a towel to get rid of as much water as possible and hung to dry.





When the yarn was dry, I wound it and made my aunt's mitts. These were worked on size 1 US (2.25 mm) needles.






Notes: While the yarn dyed beautifully and knitted up well, I would have liked it to be a bit softer. I do understand, however, that this was intended to be used for socks and was likely designed to withstand a lot more stress and wear than the mitts will probably ever get :)

I rather enjoyed the stove-top process. I have done it before, but only rarely and it always surprises me how quickly the whole thing goes. I need to explore this more. The only disadvantage is that I'm not comfortable putting something on the fire and then leaving the kitchen - so I had to stay right there while things were working. With the crock pot, I don't feel that kind of constraint.

Colored by Robbyn on 02/04 at 03:57 PM
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