The Dye Pot

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.....

Posted by Robbyn on 01/08 at 12:27 PM