The Dye Pot

Ibis

This is three balls of sport/DK washable wool, originally cream colored. I used Wilton's Icing dye for the color and while I am happy with the results, I'm finding the icing dye a bit iffy to work with. For one thing, the addition of acid seems to somewhat neutralize red tones and of course if there's no acid, the dye won't adhere to the yarn and you can kiss colorfast goodbye :)





Materials

Approximately 5.4 oz Chabotte sport/DK weight washable wool
3/4 tsp Wilton's icing dye - Pink
1/4 tsp Wilton's icing dye - Orange
Few drops Wilton's Icing Dye - Brown
1/2 c white vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Ibis

This was a standard crock pot dye (see link to crock pot dyeing tutorial on the sidebar) except that after the vinegar was added to the dissolved dyes, the color substantially changed and actually looked quite dark. I decided to go with it anyways and find the result quite pleasing - even if it wasn't quite what I was aiming for.






Notes:

This was a very fast dye taking only about an hour to exhaust. I did note a faint solvent scent from the yarn which I assume came from whatever process was used to render the wool machine washable. I suspect (but can't, of course, know) that this contributed to the rapid uptake of the color. The final product ranges in shade from coral to hot pink with bits of medium pink and beige scattered throughout. No current plans for use.

Disposition

Stash

Colored by Robbyn on 02/11 at 10:47 PM
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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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Drake Mallard

Another crock pot overdye job and another blue-green yarn :) I seem to be on a roll!

Materials

Approximately 2.3 ounces of Knitpicks Merino Style, light grey.
1 tablet green Easter Egg dye
About a tablespoon McCormack's liquid food dye - blue
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock-pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Drake Mallard






Process

I started by winding the yarn from two partial 50 gram balls into a single skein and then weighed it to determine the amounts of dye that would be neseccary. The yarn was soaked in tepid water and dish detergent for about 40 minutes, then added to the crock pot along with the dye bath. The temperature was set to high and it took about an hour and a half to exhaust the dye. The yarn was then allowed to cool and was washed, rinsed and hung up to dry.

Geez, it takes a lot longer to dry yarn in the kitchen when all the windows are closed!





Notes:

As this yarn was grey to begin with, the results are somewhat heathered. I probably should have forseen that, but didn't :) It's very nice anyway, sort of a medium/dark teal and will go nicely with my growing collection of blue-green yarns. Now, if I can only figure out what to do with them!

As with all the Knitpicks merinos I have dyed (whether they had been previously dyed or not) there was some slight fulling - not much and not enough to be problematic. But when I unwound the skein to roll the center-pull ball, it was just slightly sticky in spots where the yarn had grabbed on to itself.

Colored by Robbyn on 12/20 at 07:10 PM
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The Jade Sea

I went back to the crock pot for this one because it's easy and, though it takes more time, I didn't have to stand over it. This was a good thing as I had a lot I wanted to get done Sunday. It is the same basic method I've been using pretty much all along - simple and effective for a solid color yarn.

Materials

Approximately 4 ounces of Lion Fisherman's wool, natural color.
2 tablets green Easter Egg dye
3 packets lemon/lime "Crystal Lite" type drink mix (Shaw's Supermarket house brand, in this case)
About 1/2 to 3/4 tsp watermelon/cherry kool-aid
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock-pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Jade Sea






The name, by the way, comes from the Guild Wars: Factions game. When the uber bad guy was killed, he let out a howl so devastating that a vast, inland sea was turned to stone - turned to jade, actually. Looks like this:





Process

I started with the idea of using up some of the stuff I've had hanging around for a while. The reason it's been hanging around is that I'm not especially fond of greens - especially those at the yellowish end of the spectrum. SO those dye components which would yield a straight green or a yellowish green have been passed over again and again. However, knowing that a year ago I would have turned my nose up at golds, most oranges and the warmer red tones whereas now I positively lust after them, I figured it wouldn't do any harm to play around. It wouldn't be a "bad" color (that is it wouldn't be mud-colored or anything ugly like that) even if I didn't care for it. Someone (probably in Mongolia) would.

I soaked the yarn in tepid water with a few drops of dish detergent. While that was going on, I mixed the dye with water and probably 1/2 a cup of white vinegar. Added the yarn to the crock-pot (squeezed out, but not rinsed) and poured the dyebath in on top. I set the crock-pot on high this time, rather than the low setting I have been using. Not only did things proceed more quickly, the yarn didn't felt even slightly! Having worked with this yarn many, many times before, I know that it has a tendency to do so if not handled carefully. Not, you know, turning into a big, inseparable lump, but just getting a little "sticky". The difficulty is in figuring out what it considers careful handling :) Anyway, this time it didn't do that. You learn something every day :)

The dyebath was exhausted after about an hour and a half and I then turned the pot off, let the yarn cool, rinsed it and hung it to dry.





Notes:

As with most of my solid color dyeing efforts, this is only solid to a degree :) There are spots where there is a definite, though mild, shading towards either yellow or blue. How this happens when the yarn is the same all through the skein and the dye solution is even and uniform is beyond me. It isn't unattractive and I don't dislike it, but I suspect I am never going to get a perfectly uniform color and should just stop worrying about it.

This is a very refreshing color to my eye and, as seems consistent for me, I am again, very pleased with something I wasn't sure about when I started.

Colored by Robbyn on 12/04 at 01:06 PM
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Citrine Curry

This was an effort to dye using a more traditional method - the stove top :) I love my crock pot, but I wanted to see how this worked and what results I would get. There were couple of surprises not the least of which was that I didn't care for it while it was in process but I loved it once it had been washed and dried. I also used a more complicated coloring process than was, strictly speaking, necessary I suppose, but I feel it worked well.

Materials

Approximately 4 ounces of Lion FIsherman's wool, natural color.
1 1/2 tablet orange Easter Egg dye
1 1/2 tablet yellow Easter egg dye
1 pkg watermelon/cherry kool-aid
5 teabags
White vinegar
Water

Method

Stove top

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Citrine Curry





Process

I started by making a strong tea solution using 5 tea bags - Trader Joe's English Breakfast, if it matters :) When it had cooled, it became the base of the dye baths - there were three of them. I set the yarn to soak in tepid (barely) water (no salt or detergent of any kind) and went to work prepping the dye solutions. I divided the tea equally between three jars. Number one got an orange dye tablet, number two got half an orange and half a yellow dye tablet and number three got a yellow dye tablet. Each jar also got about 1/3 teaspoon of kool-aid which added a light orangey-pink tone.





I squeezed as much water out of the yarn as I could and divided it as evenly as possible between the three jars which had been placed in a strainer in a kettle. I filled the kettle with water and put it on the stove, brought the water to a simmer and let things run until the dye baths were exhausted - about 1/2 hour. I turned the heat off and let everything cool down (a considerably longer process than it usually is with the crock pot), washed and rinsed the yarn and hung it to dry.





To my considerable surprise, what had looked like a muddled mess in the pot, looked intriguing and interesting once it was straightened out. As the colors all reminded me of various foods, it also made me hungry :)





Notes:

It was pleasant to successfully (more or less) dye a three color yarn in one day and the actual dyeing took much less time than usual though the prep time was quite a bit longer - mostly due to the steeping and brewing of the tea. Interestingly, previous attempts with tea (Cantaloupe and Buttered Toast) had resulted in a dyebath that wouldn't exhaust. I had pretty much begun to feel that while tea did have the desired muting effect, its presence would prevent a complete uptake of the dye. However, that didn't happen this time. There was no color left in the jars when the processing was finished - just a somewhat translucent milkiness.

Also of interest was that though the yarn was sitting in boiling water for half an hour, it didn't full or mat in the slightest. The crock pot runs at a much lower temperature than this process did. This tells me that I'm agitating the yarn too much in the crock. There isn't a lot of room to stir things in the jars that contained the yarn and the dye so there wasn't any stirring - and clearly the temperature wasn't the issue. Defeinitely something to remember going forward.

My burgeoning interest in warm colors continues :) This is very pleasing and every time I look at it I see curry and lemons and feel like I'm sitting in a field of marigolds. Wheeeeee...!

Colored by Robbyn on 10/06 at 12:50 PM
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Indicolite

This is another in a series of efforts to dye some mohair from a yucky pink to a useable color.  The previous attempts, Purple Haze and Oasis Sunset were pleasantly successful so when I discovered more pink yarn…





...(this is a deeper pink) overdying seemed like a reasonable option.

Materials

Approximately 4 ounces of Classic Elite La Gran Mohair, medium grey/pink color.
About 1/2 oz liquid, blue food coloring
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Color crocked very slightly through all washings and rinsings.  I would assume that it may continue to do so (the way jeans do) for a while.

Color name

Indicolite

The battle for purple continues :) I thought I had a shot here with the liquid food coloring (blue) to which I would add just a touch of red icing dye thus circumventing the violet icing dye’s inevitable color change when the vinegar is added.  I started with a fair amount of the blue and then added the red after dissolving it in hot water.  That gave me a great violet!  Then I added the vinegar and the whole thing changed into a dirty, swapy green.  Bleah… For the first time I threw out a dyebath.  Better that than the yarn, I’m thinking :)

I proceeded using only the liquid, blue food coloring.  I washed this yarn in dish detergent and did not rinse before dyeing it.  The dye, being liquid, didn’t need to be prepared or dissolved and so it was simply added to water and vinegar (probably half a cup) to create enough dye solution to cover the yarn.  The yarn was soaked and then washed in dish detergent.  The dyebath was poured into the crock pot, the yarn was added and the pot covered and set to low.  The dyebath never did quite exhaust. This ran all day and was allowed to cool overnight.  Washing, rinsing (many, many rinses!) and drying followed the standard procedure.

Notes:

I now know that the issues of achieving a violet color in the presence of acid have to do with the red component of the color - at least in the icing dyes.  I’ve used red and pink kool-aids and not noticed any color changes, nor were there any problems with the red easter egg tablets.  Grape kool-aid (a natural, you would think, for a purple dye) has a substantial green component which I find unattractive and drab.

Indicolite is the blue-green variety of tourmaline and this yarn came out almost exactly that shade, hence the name.

I must say, mohair certainly dyes nicely - at least Classic Elite’s mohair does.  I’m getting the hang of hnadling it properly too.  The first time I did this, the yarn was a matted mess after it had dried and required much coaxing and pleading to straighten out.  This time the yarn unwound (from the skein) and wound (into the ball) as smoothly as silk.

Colored by Robbyn on 09/22 at 11:25 AM
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Black Watch

I wasn’t aiming for anything in particular with this project, more looking to expand upon the experiment in variegation done in Crimson and Clover.  Well, that’s not exactly true I guess; I was hoping for more of a teal and less of an evergreen than I got but it’s all good, right?  If it doesn’t look like mud, then it’s a success - or so I tell myself :) And anyway, that’s just color - the experiment part went swimmingly!

Materials

Approximately 4 ounces of Lion FIsherman’s wool, natural color.
First stage: About 1/2 tsp Wilton’s icing dye - leaf green
Second stage:  1 bottle (1 fl oz) McCormick food coloring - blue
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Black Watch

Stage 1

As before, I tied the skein off into six, roughly equidistant segments.  This time I made a conscious effort to tie the denim strips very tightly and had better luck with them blocking the dye from the yarn beneath them.  I soaked (but did not wash) the yarn, ties and all.

I dissolved the icing dye hot water and then added that to about a gallon of tepid water along with about a 1/2 cup of white vinegar.  This went into the crock pot and the yarn was then added.  Heat was set at low.  I checked things every hour or so but this went for about 5 hours before most of the color was exhausted and even then here was a very faint green tint to what was left in the crock.  The yield was a bright green yarn interspersed with the natural cream of the undyed stuff at six more-or-less regular intervals.  I washed the yarn, untied the ties and hung it to dry.

Stage 2

The next day I tied the yarn off again, in the middle of the green sections this time, so that a little of the green was left on either side of the ties and the cream was completely exposed.  I made the dye bath with about 1/3 of an ounce of the liquid blue food color, white vinegar and water.  Then I soaked the yarn and added it to the dye bath.  After three hours or so in the crock pot, on low heat, the color had exhausted but the yarn looked dull and uninteresting.  It was also still a great deal more green than I wanted so I mixed up the remaining blue color and added that to the bath (removing the yarn before I did so and replacing it afterwards).  This took a long time to clear - about six more hours - but the results were much more pleasing to my eye.  The yarn ranges through medium/dark blue to evergreen to bright green.

Notes:

As an experiment in dyeing a yarn three different colors, this worked out pretty well.  The problem, if there was one, was that the green was almost overwhelming.  I will know next time to either use less dye or to mute it a bit (a bit of red or orange?) if I don’t want it to be quite so vivid.

Tying things off makes for a lengthy process - this took three days all together - but produces a nice result I think.  These colors are acceptable and work well together.  I’m still new enough at this whole dyeing thing for that to be enough :)

Colored by Robbyn on 09/15 at 10:27 AM
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Crimson and Clover

Again we had a case of the musical generation gap :) When I asked Myria for her thoughts about a name, she suggested Crimson and Clover - only the version she was thinking of was done by Joan Jett while I was remembering Tommy James and the Shondelles!

This batch went a little differently than usual. First, I wanted to try (intentionally!) to create a variegated yarn and second, I used (at least for the first step) a new type of dye. Well, new to me anyways :)





These are Wilton's Icing dyes. I am provisionally pleased with how well they work - more about that later.

Materials

Approximately 4 ounces of Lion FIsherman's wool, natural color.
First stage: About 3/4 tsp Wilton's icing dye - violet
Second stage: 4 packages of Kool-Aid - cherry (not black cherry)
2 tbl table salt
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Crimson and Clover





Stage 1

After I had wound the skein, I tied it off tightly at regular intervals with strips of old denim material (Very old denim. I wouldn't recommend anything less than ancient because denim can crock color for quite a long time when it's washed.) I wanted the material to be cotton so that it would be impervious to the dye and so that it would help block the dye from getting to the segments of yarn it was tied around.





Then I dissolved the violet icing dye in plain water to which I had added the salt in an effort to promote uptake. I did not initially use any vinegar because the Wilton site warns that adding acid to the violet dye will change the color to blue! I had hoped adding the salt would help the uptake. If I had thought about it even a little though, I would have known better since the wool needs the acid to help it absorb the dye. But the violet was such a beautiful color and I so hoped I could get it to work - LOL - by sheer will power, I guess :)

In any case, the washed wool went into the crock pot and, after I had added enough water to the dye to cover the yarn, that went in on top. I turned the crock pot to high for about an hour and then set it to low for another couple of hours. When I checked the yarn after that, the dyebath was still dark. Lifting the yarn out of the crock made all the color, save for a very slight pinkish tinge, run right out of the yarn...sigh...

So I dipped out a glassful of the dyebath and added a glug of vinegar to it to see what would happen.





And, of course, the advice given on the Wilton site was quite correct. It went from a beautiful medium/deep violet to a kind of Caribbean blue. By then I had realized that without acid of some kind, this wasn't going anywhere. So I removed the yarn from the dyebath, added about a half cup of white vinegar, mixed everything together and then put the yarn back in. The color did change but not as radically as I had thought it would. I wound up with a color more like iris than violet - not what I'd hoped for, but entirely acceptable even so.





After the dyebath had exhausted (another two hours or so), I washed the skein in shampoo/conditioner, squeezed it in a towel to get out as much water as possible and hung it in the kitchen window to dry. The above picture is what it looked like the next morning after I had untied and removed the denim strips. As you can see, the wraps didn't completely block absorbtion of the first dye but they did a decent enough job. I might try strips of plastic next time - cut up a garbage bag, maybe?

Stage 2

The next day, I dissolved four packages of cherry koolaid in white vinegar while I pre-soaked the yarn (I didn't wash it again). I suppose I could have prepared the second dyebath and gone straight into that part of things when the first dyebath had exhausted. But that would have meant watching the dyepot for another three hours and then doing the washing, rinsing, squeezing and hanging - and that all was too much like work - so stage 2 waited until the following day :)

I intended to overdye the whole skein so that both the color already in the yarn and the blank spots would take up the color. That procedure went perfectly normally and I finished things up in the ordinary fashion.





Notes:

I'm quite pleased - even a little smug - about the finished product. There's a lot of playing around room in this process. For example, what if I had tied off the center of the dyed sections of the yarn before dumping it in the second dyebath? That would have (theoretically, of course) given me three related colors in the yarn instead of two. This is something I will certainly try in the future. I am also storing jars for the more traditional method of creating a multi-colored yarn and will be trying that as well before too much longer

As with Oasis Sunset, I had wondered exactly how much dye the yarn could hold before it wouldn't accept any more. This time I dyed the yarn twice - once for a base shade and once to apply a secondary color. The yarn took all of the dye both times. Makes me wonder if I could go on applying colors indefinitely.

As for the violet...well...I have some thoughts about using combinations of blue and red to get where I want to go. I suppose it's possible that the addition of acid will alter that too but it's also possible that it's just the particular substance (pigment? chemical?) that's being used for the violet dye which reacts with the acid. Nothing to do but try!

Colored by Robbyn on 09/07 at 09:26 PM
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Oasis Sunset

This is the second part of the experiment that started with Purple Haze.  The idea was to convert four balls of dirty pink mohair:





...into something nicer looking and therefore useable :)

Materials

Approximately 3.5 ounces of Classic Elite La Gran Mohair, pale grey/pink color.
1 orange and 1 yellow easter egg dye tablet, 4 tubs of Crystal Light Ruby Red Grapefruit
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Oasis Sunset

I washed this yarn in dish detergent and did not rinse before dyeing it.  The dye was dissolved in about 1 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.  When I picked up the yarn to see how it looked I was disappointed by the lack of intensity.  So I dissolved two more tubs of the Crystal Light Ruby Grapefruit in a little more vibegar, added more water and then added that to the dyebath (having removed the yarn first.  I replaced it once the dye bath had been stirred).  I turned the pot back on to low and the dye had exhausted after another hour and a half.

The original dyed color is on the left and the final dyed colot on the right. Much more what I had in mind :)

I let the yarn cool in the crock and then washed it in dish detergent, rolled it up in a towel for maxumum moisture extraction and then hung it to dry.

As with Purple Haze, there isn’t a swatch of this color yet because it’s intended for the mohair blanket.  When it’s worked up, I’ll get a picture into this post.

Notes:

As previously noted when using Crystal Light drink mixes for dye, the bath exhausted very quickly and the residual in the crock was milky in appearance.  Less than 4 ounces of yarn had no problem taking up two tablets plus four tubs of color and I have to wonder how much more it would have taken up, given the opportunity.  I suspect that this ability to super-saturate (?) is what it means when I read someone say that mohair dyes beautifully.  Given the opportunity, I will certainly try this again and probably keep loading in more and more dye until the yarn has absorbed everything it can - just to see how much it takes.  Stay tuned!

Colored by Robbyn on 08/11 at 10:51 AM
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Purple Haze

I had four balls of this mohair.  Normally I like pinks, especially light pinks.  But this yarn has a slightly grey component.  Not enough to actually show, but enough to make the yarn look like it had been rolled in the dust - dirty, in other words.  I kept trying to persuade myself that the predominant pink overrode it and that it would be just fine.  Unfortunately, the more I looked at it, the less I liked it.  Besides - I hadn’t tried dyeing mohair before and it was high time to give it a try :)





Materials

Just over 3.5 oz of Classic Elite La Gran mohair - pale grey-pink
Easter egg dye tablets: 1 blue, 2 violet
Kool-aid: 1 packet black cherry
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Purple Heather

I washed this yarn in dish detergent and did not rinse it before putting into the crock.  The dye was dissolved in about a cup of vinegar (give or take an ounce or two).  Water was then added, after the dye was completely dissolved, to make a solution that would cover the yarn and this was poured into the crock.  Things were stirred gently and then the crock was turned on low for about three and a half hours - until the dye was exhausted.

I had read many times that mohair dyes beautifully and was curious to see what would happen.  I was also wondering if I would be able to re-wind it after it had come out of the bath and been washed and dried.  As it happens, this wasn’t a serious chore.  However, while there wasn’t any felting (that I could determine) there was some matting as the mohair fibers are fairly long and do entangle with one another despite all precautions.  Gentle persuasion was all that was required to pull them apart.

There isn’t a swatch of this yet as it is earmarked for my mohair blanket and I don’t want to use any of it up before that’s done.  Because...well...you never know :) But, when I have worked some of it up, I will add a picture to this post.

Notes:
The process went easily and the yarn took the dye beautifully.  Again, I wound up with the striations that seem to be the hallmark of hand-dyed yarn and it took me a while to get used to the appearance.  This looked very dark coming out of the crock pot but lightened considerably (more than I would have expected) upon drying.  Initially I didn’t think much of this color, but the more I look at it, the more depth it seems to have and the better-looking it seems to me.  It will be a wonderful addition to the blanket and I’m seriously considering dyeing the other two balls of this stuff with oranges and yellows.  That should produce an interesting effect over the pink and will provide more fodder for the blanket.

Also, when I did a progress check about half-way through the dye time, I observed that the red and blue tones of the dye had been pretty much taken up by the yarn but that there was still a green component in the water.  I saw this phenomena before when I used black cherry Kool-aid to dye with and it’s something to bear in mind in the future.  While there are no greens obvious in the finished yarn, presumably it had a muting effect and green is not a color I often want to combine with...well...much of anything, let alone reds and purples :)

Colored by Robbyn on 08/09 at 10:14 AM
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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

Colored by Robbyn on 07/04 at 11:02 PM
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