Well, I worked on the new blog from 10:00 or so yesterday morning until about 4:00 this morning.  As usual, I figured on it taking a certain amount of time to get things up and running only to discover that I was only about 1/4th right :)

But that doesn’t matter :)

First, The Dye Pot is open (also see the link on the sidebar directly beneath Knitting Chatters)!  There’s still a bit of tidying up to do but we’re substantially ready to go.  This is intended to be a sort of on-line notebook where I can record methods, materials and procedures while I pursue the goal of finding out what I can do with yarn and food-safe dyes in a tiny apartment kitchen.  It is my sincere hope that many of you good folks will find it useful too.

I did change my mind on the name...so we have Dye Pot rather than Dye Notebook.  Just thought it sounded better :)

Oh - and I remembered that I have a nice big ball of cream colored mohair in the closet.  I’ll be very curious to see whether I can get that dyed without it turning into one big, hairy knot.  Maybe not today though :)

Friday, I hope to have more on the lacy sock and perhaps a start on the mohair project.

And now that I have posted (I know it barely qualifies, but I’m barely awake so we’re even), I’m hoping my stupid brain will let me get some sleep rather than jumping up and down and raising a ruckus because it knows I have to write a post this morning.  Hopefully this will pacify it.

Did you all have a good holiday?

Look at this!

This was a mistake.  It wasn’t supposed to happen but in my ineptitude and inexperience, this is what I got.





Isn’t it gorgeous?  Sea colors!  Come sail away!





Yesterday I finally had the time to do a dye project that’s been flitting through my head for a while now.  Nothing spectacular you know, just wanting to see if what I had left of the blue and purple Easter-egg dyes would give me a nice blue-violet - one of my favorite shades.  So I gathered my supplies and dug out the last of my undyed wool and got to it.

The yarn is LB Fisherman’s wool and there was just about 6 ounces of it.  I hadn’t dyed anything like that quantity before but I figured nothing ventured, etc… I washed the yarn, as usual and placed it in the crock pot - there was not a lot of sloshing room left over.  Then I mixed the dyes (three tablets each of blue and purple - roughly one tablet per ounce of fiber which is what I’ve been doing pretty much all along). 

Here I got my first hint that something might be a little different than usual.  The dye in the bowl looked very blue, medium dark, and showed very little red presence at all.  I shrugged mentally, decided I could live with the color, and proceeded to pour the dye over the yarn in the crock pot.  It didn’t, of course, hit all of the yarn nor did the liquid completely cover the yarn so I quickly added more water.  When the water hit the parts of the yarn that had absorbed some of the dye it washed away the color - except for the reds (which turned out to be there after all) leaving a pink color in the yarn!  After getting the liquid level right, I stirred everything together (gently, of course), set the crock pot on low and went and did some last minute grocery shopping.

When I got home, I checked to make sure the yarn had absorbed all the dye (it had), turned the pot off and let it cool.  From what I was looking at the top of the crock, it looked as though the purple had established a presence and what I could see looked very close to the blue-violet I had originally had in mind.  Imagine my surprise when I lifted it out to be washed and saw all kinds of colors running through the hank raging from pink/purple to blue to blue/green!

And no mud anywhere - no yucky shades where the colors hadn’t played nicely with one another!

I was enchanted.  After the yarn had been washed and hung to dry, I kept going back out into the kitchen to look at it because the colors were so pretty.  The colors were, of course, lighter this morning because it was mostly dry, but still quite attractive - at least to my eye.

I also learned something else :) I had been using white, cotton crochet thread to tie up hanks of yarn for dyeing.  This time I thought I would use pieces of the wool itself.  As it happened, I didn’t cut up enough wool so the hank wound up being tied half with wool and half with the cotton thread.

I had known that the cotton wouldn’t take up this kind of dye.  What I hadn’t realized was that it could actually block the wool from taking up the dye too.

See the light spot just north of my finger?

That’s where part of the tie sat on the hank.  The yarn isn’t totally without color, but the color it has is quite light.  I’m guessing it’s what seeped in from the strands around it as the cotton tie never allowed it any direct contact.  I had made sure the ties were loose.  I imagine that the much-larger-than-usual quantity of yarn in combination with the cotton created a situation where once this particular section of the hank was in the dye bath, it never was able to move (even when I was stirring it) enough to get the dye to those strands immediately beneath the tie.





The yarn beneath the wool ties looks just as you would expect it to as the ties took up the dye the same way the hank did - being the same material :)

I am constrained to point out, however, that only one of the cotton ties produced this effect.  The yarn beneath all the others was fine.  However, it occurs to me that this tendency could be used intentionally to create light and dark areas in the same hank.  Mmmmm...the possibilities!

I have finally set up The Dye Notebook.  It isn’t quite ready for prime time but I should have it up to speed by Wednesday.  Though it uses a blog format, it isn’t really that as I won’t be posting to it on anything like a regular basis.  But, when I do a new batch of something, the procedure, materials, results, notes and pictures will be posted there.  I will always make note in The Yarnpath of a new post in The Dye Notebook and there will, of course, be links from one to the other.

I wish you all a wonderful and safe holiday!