Friday, March 09, 2007


Gypsy Rose


Gypsy Rose



Materials

Approximately 5 ounces sportweight wool, 90% merino, 10% nylon (according to the label)
PAAS dye tablets: 6 red, 1 violet
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Gypsy Rose

Soaked the yarn in tepid water (no detergent or soap), dissolved the dye in vinegar and water, placed yarn in crock pot, poured dye bath in and set oh high. The dye took about 6 hours to exhaust and the yarn was left to cool overnight. Then it was washed, rolled in a towel and stood on to squeeze out as much poisture as possible and then hung to dry.



Gypsy Rose - wound



If you look closely, you'll see that the ball on the upper left isn't the same as the other two. The dyeing produced an almost marled effect leading me to suspect that the fiber composition of this particular ball of yarn is different from the other two (there were three balls all together) regardless of all three ball bands being the same and giving identical information. Such are the surprises to be had when diving into the bargain bin :)



Gypsy Rose - swatch




Notes: The swatch was done with the solid color yarn.

The color is very similar to an early experiment, Second Hand Rose which was a cream/pale yellow lace weight alpaca. While this yarn looked like any other ordinary cream colored yarn, possibly there was a yellow dye component already in it, rather than it just being a natural color...you know...naturally :)

This yarn had an odd, almost plasticky feel when it was wet and took, relatively speaking, a lot of time to take up all the dye. It's interesting to get two very different results from a single dye lot and is, perhaps, something to remember in the future. That is, it might be something to do intentionally rather than accidentally with an array of yarns of different fiber compositions in order to get a related, but not identical, range of colors.

The yarn has wonderful body and is very springy :) It made a wonderful swatch that was as vibrant to the fingers as it was to the eye - as did its sister yarn, Ibis (same brand, slightly different style) which is currently being worked into a very bright pair of socks :)

As this was bargain bin stuff, I don't expect to run into it again and couldn't find anything about the brand (Chabotte) on line.

Posted by Robbyn on 03/09 at 01:18 PM

Next entry: Silver Mauve

Previous entry: Ibis

Lovely color—again! 

Reading over your historical dyeing adventures, I noticed that you sometimes leave the pre-wash detergent in the yarn.  What is the advantage of that?  (Sorry if this is a redundant question!  I just haven’t seen it elsewhere.)

Thanks!

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  03/14  at  06:37 PM

Hi Gwyndolyn :)

The dish soap is part of the lore I picked up when I started reading about dyeing.  It is (this is the theory) suppose to make the water slipperier which should make it easier to wet the yarn evenly in the dyebath.

In practice, I haven’t found that it makes much difference at all.  It doesn’t interfere with the dye process however, so when I feel the need to prewash the yarn (old yarn, frogged yarn, etc…), I don’t usually bother to rinse the soap out.

The other bit of lore I ran into with some frequency was about using salt to help fix the dye - mast it fast, in other words.  And again, I haven’t noticed any difference between salted and unsalted dyebaths :)

Neither practice seems to bother the dyeing at all so if you’re curious, by all means try them.  They may not help - but they won’t hurt either :)

Posted by Robbyn  on  03/14  at  07:18 PM

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