To explain. In the natural course of events, I ran out of my Crimson dye about a week ago.

Now, I’ve used two red dyes before. One is Crimson (my favorite) and the other is Fire Red. I had always preferred Crimson because of the deeper color tones. (The Fire Red tended to go orangey.) Well, when I ran out I hastened to order more, but the place I was buying from didn’t have Crimson! Against my will, I wound up trying the Scarlet dye.

A few days ago I gave it a trial run, not expecting much success. I aimed for the brightest, most intense, luminescent shade of red I thought I could get away with. And it exceeded my expectation. Wow! I’m so excited.

For the record, that’s a merino/silk laceweight that will be going up on Etsy in the next few days. Along with its friend. My lovely cobalt blue and purple version. (Which is already up.)

Spinning wise, I’m plying the Willow fingering weight. It looks like it will be a less dense of a yarn than I had originally envisioned, but still quite nice.

The only thing I can think of is that the yarn didn’t have long enough to presoak (but we gave it a couple days of soaking!) or perhaps it had some sort of chemical in it, which would be odd because it was supposed to be organic cotton. Queer.

And to make things queerer, take a look at the picture. All these yarns were dunked twice. The one on the right was actually dunked three times. Notice anything odd about the color intensity? The brightest yarn (on the left) is a) superwash and b) soaked longer than the one on the far right. They’re both merino wool. Apparently the length of soak time does effect yarns… but the cotton soaked every bit as long as the superwash!

While we were waiting for the indigo to simmer itself into a usable state we did some more regular dyeing. Unfortunately I didn’t get pictures of the results, but my aunt promised to take some photos and send them along. However, I took some of the leftover dyes and did an impromptu multi-colored batch of fleece. Remind me not to put black dye right in on top of the red. It swallows everything up whole. Not that I don’t like this; it just wasn’t what was expected.

But, on a high note, my aunt knit up that fall-inspired single yarn into a gorgeous scarf. Didn’t she do well?

Then there was this yarn. Another two skeins of the bulky weight. Nice? Pretty? I love the jewel-like tones.

But this yarn was supposed to be purple with green and yellow flecks, and a few spots of brown. Do you see purple? Anywhere at all? I see blue, but not purple.
Every so often the carefully mixed dyes decide to separate and become new entities. The “red + blue = purple” combination separated.

So, we had two really good finished colorways and one that was still nice, but unplanned.

Fast forward a couple of days. We decided to dye some more yarn. Two skeins, this time. The DK weight turned out beautifully in pink, chocolate, white, and butterscotch.

The other skein decided to repeat the bulky weight’s quick change act. This was originally intended to be dark gray, light gray, and red. I didn’t have black, so I mixed brown and blue to get the gray tones. Guess what? The brown and blue separated.

Why is it that I’m only having trouble with it on someone else’s yarn? It must be the Bermuda Triangle of dyes. Mixed dyes usually behave just fine! Has anyone else had trouble with mixing colors?

Wool is one of the easiest fibers to dye. It responds readily to Kool-Aid, commercial dyes, natural (plant- or animal-derived) dyes, and even food coloring.

There are dozens of different ways to color wool, and, as I’ve only tried a few of them, I can’t give you detailed tutorials for everything, but here are some of the ones that have helped me along and given me some really great results. I use Jacquard Acid Dyes for most of my dyeing, with the odd natural dye thrown in. The Jacquards are really nice because the only chemical you need to set the color is vinegar!

Kettle-Dyeing

If you’re a knitter you have probably heard the term “kettle-dyed” before. It pretty much means that the yarn will be mostly the same color, with a slight shift in intensity in some areas. This is achieved by cooking the yarn (or wool roving) in a pot of dye solution. The actual process will vary depending on what kind of dye you use.

This tutorial is for doing more than one color at a time, and I did it a couple times awhile back. You can read about them in this post and this one if you want to see the results. This method is quite fun.

Rainbow in a Pot

This is my favorite way to dye yarn. You just mix up the dyes and pour them in!

Roving for Supper

And this is the way that I do practically all of my wool rovings. No open flames on the stove top to worry about! Sometimes, if I don’t feel like heating up the oven, I’ll put the wool in a pot and treat it like the yarn in the “Rainbow” method.

The Kool-Aid Way

If you’re looking for something less “toxic” than usual dyes and something that you can do on the stovetop or in the microwave, this is the way to go. I have a friend who has gotten beautiful colors out of this.

I tried it, but as a school project for some young friends of mine. From the moment I found I couldn’t fit a mason jar into their tiny microwave, I knew things were going to be a bit rocky. Thankfully the colors still turned out well. We just set each jar into a big pot of boiling water and let it sit there and steam until I figured the colors were done.

I love it when I get to post about dyeing. The pictures are always so colorful!

As I hinted earlier, I did some regular acid dyes while getting the indigo pot ready. The plan was to handpaint the lace weight single in emerald, purple, gold, and blue. Ha ha.

My first mistake was not premixing the colors. I made a yellow, a blue, and a red, thinking I would just paint over the top of each one to create the nice green and purple tones. Believe me, that didn’t work so well.

Especially since I diluted the colors so much it took three or four dabs to make a decent intensity of tone. In short, after messing about with it for awhile, I mixed up the colors I wanted and poured them over yarn in my usual method. Here is the result.

And if anyone can explain to me how pink mixed with lots of sapphire can turn into burgundy, I’d be most obliged. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. It went into the pot purple and came out this red. I’m still not even sure if I like the finished color mix. It definitely has character. In fact, it reminds me of some sort of exotic bird. The greens and the red. Well, now I just have to decide if I’m going to use this for a headband after all.

I had some of the mixed dyes left over after doing that tiny skein so I grabbed a pre-soaking yarn and poured them over it. And wound up with this.
Green green green. This was one occasion in which the dyes were messing with me. Maybe they were jealous of my growing infatuation with the indigo vat.
This is the third of the Iowa fleece triplets. So much for dyeing them all the same color! One light blue, one dark blue, and one vivid greens. Ah well. Variety (and silk) are supposedly the spice of life.

(That bonus picture at the top is a close up of this skein.)

Waterlilies

Rose-Colored Glasses

I’ve been having so much fun creating the colors and seeing them come together. Sometimes the colors just create themselves.

That’s what’s so fun about dyeing. The colors take on a life of their own. I’m very eager to dye some more fiber, and maybe some yarns! I’d forgotten just how exciting it is. I love colors with every fiber of my being (no pun intended) and seeing them emerge right before my eyes is a never-ending joy.

Citrus Twist

Fall-Dyed Fleece

I’m thinking I will separate the colors when I card it to try to maintain relatively clear color shifts. In fact, I may play around with how I put the fiber on the carders. I’m almost wishing I had dyed more fleece when I did, although I only dyed one of the silk hankies—and in order to keep the right silk-to-wool ratio, I had to use just twice as much wool as silk. Which meant two ounces of wool. So, come to think of it, I bet I did way more anyway. Dyeing both hankies would have been the simplest route to take, but I didn’t want to risk ruining both hankies if something went wrong.

But, on a positive note, even though I wound up having to run for extra fiber due to a dye surplus (again), I absolutely love all the finished products.

Leafy Green

I’m guessing it wasn’t too hot, because look at this! I’m getting happy-fiber waves just thinking about it.

Silk, Silk, Silk

And, while I actually remembered to flip the hankie over and make sure the back got well dyed, I didn’t think to do it for the sock fiber. It had huge white blobs of undyed fiber in it. So I wound up dyeing it a second time, specifically aiming for those pesky blotches. I got most of them out. A few little spots won’t hurt. One thing that had me puzzled, though, was where the bamboo went.

Finished Roving

Bamboo Streaks

Oh, and I finished the red scarf, but I don’t have any pictures of it because I finished it while I was at the recipient’s house. And said little recipient was very eager to get it. It still curled a bit after some make-shift blocking. Now I’ve got to get back to the merino/silk scarf and stop eyeing crochet patterns!

Filled to Overflowing

At least I know which one I’m going to tackle first. And I have plans for a pound of the merino, the flax, and the pink batt. That helps quite a bit. Otherwise I’d be running around franticly trying to decide which to try!

One of the dye bottles is for my Rebecca sweater. I decided on a sea-foam green color, (per test) and I’m hoping the dyeing process will soften up the yarn a bit.

Now that I have all the ingredients for indigo or natural dyeing, I’m going to have to resist until I get some yarn spun! Well, I guess I could dye the roving . . . no, no, I need to stay focused. (Why?)

Voila

And they looked like this before they went into the oven (see the one on the right). I’ll wait for the collective gasp of horror to dye down. Oh, I mean “die” down. (Can you say, “one track mind”?)

As far as I know they’re still usable. They squished down like that when I squeezed the extra water out. I know silk can felt in some way or another, but I’m not sure if it can felt to itself, or just to some other fiber. Anyway, here are some things I learned.

1) Pre-soak the silk at least overnight. No quick thirty minute deals here. Thankfully a very good friend told me about this ahead of time. And as a fun game, when you first put the water in with the silk, the silk floats, so you can send ripples through the silk by swishing the water.

2) If you pour the dye mix on top of the silk, it stays there. Hence the two color look. I’m used to wool, where you pour it on and it soaks right through. No such thing with silk! I’m going to have to lift it up and pour the dye under it as well.

3) If you forget to add the vinegar before you pour the dye, don’t worry. Just mix up a second solution of dye and put in twice as much vinegar. (Through the whole process I was trying to go easy on the vinegar because I’ve heard that too much can damage the silky shine.)

4) Hot silk smells like fish sticks. Old ones. Or, if you prefer another member of the household’s opinion, it smells like baking worms. Not that I know what a baking worm would smell like. (I wonder, can you spin them?)

5) When the silk comes out of the oven . . . wait a minute, did I just think about spinning worms?

6) Anyway, when the silk comes out prepare yourself for a mild heart attack. I squeezed the extra water out of the silk and almost hit the floor. (Witness, the above pictures.)

I’m still waiting for it to dry thoroughly before attempting to spin it. It seems to fluff up fairly well if I gently pull it apart, but we shall see. Thankfully this was tussah silk that I got at a discount at the fiber festival. (Eight ounces for $13!) So I’m not flipping out over a possible mistake. And I’m actually willing to try it again! Maybe after some more research, but I’m up for the challenge.

Six New Dyes

There’s an umbrella swift (to hold the yarn skeins) and some blank yarn and fiber coming from another store. At least I think it’s coming. I haven’t heard anything back from them about a tracking number. Hmm. I’d better go check on that.