A little dyeing

I had bought a skein of pale blue superwash yarn. A nice bouncy soft yarn, but so pale of a blue it looked anemic. When I was contemplating knitting for nieces and nephews I flirted with making a Minion hat. The yellow I bought at the same time was just the right color, the blue, not so much.

So how about overdyeing it? Pulled out the Blue Raspberry Kool-Aid. It didn't seem dark enough, so added some blue Wilton's dye and it was pretty good.

original color

Mixing up the dye

Trying to see into the crock pot

Soaked up the dyes

After drying

Second after dyeing

So I had to pour in more of the Wilton's because I noticed when I tried pulling it out the first time that some of it had not dissolved into the water before pouring it in and it sat on the yarn - those very dark splotches. Sad panda. 

Added more Wilton's to hot water and stirred and stirred to get it all to dissolve into the water and still a tiny bit didn't at the end. You see this as its slipping into the water. The color doesn't show well here in the photos, but its definitely brighter and kind of fun. 

Sadly, in an effort not to have tie lines where the skein is held as a hank I didn't tighten up Kraemer's ties. Kraemer is the manufacturer of the yarn. What does this mean for me? When I went to try to put it through the ball winder the hank on the swift had fits. I'm now left to wind it up by hand into a ball and then put it back through the ball winder or back into a hank with a niddy-noddy. 

That's why I had to buy a skein of Encore to do Keefe's Ola hat waves. The hank went into a time out to be dealt with after Christmas. I've started to detangle it, and as usual its frustrating. Since its superwash, I can't cut and spit splice ends.

I tried it out

With the last post I showed that I had some yarns soaking in alum and cream of tartar getting ready to try out a natural dye bath of black beans. So as a refresher - a single of polworth, three ply of polworth, merino two ply and a two ply of merino-alpaca-silk. I put in two bags of black beans in a couple of pots and while the yarns were in the mordant, they soaked overnight.

The next morning I wrung out the water and transferred them to the bean pots:

Just added to the crock

Just added to the pot

After 24 hours

After 24 hours

After 48 hours all in one big pot

After 5 days

Kind of a blue-grey

Out in true lighting - very grey

So with the less than impressive results, I decided I'd do a Kool-Aid dye bath. Two packages of Blue Raspberry and one of Lemon-lime all into a Pyrex measuring cup (I have a HUGE one) but the green really popped as the dominant color. So I pulled out some Wilton icing dye and added in a dollop or two of blue. Stirred and popped the yarns into the cup and heated. As you can see below, they all took the colors differently. Fascinating really. ;-)

Left to right - three ply Polworth, merino-alpaca-silk, merino, and polworth single.

I am going to try dyeing again with the black beans. Next time I'll only use the alum to mordant and I'm going to try using vinegar after it comes out of the pot. I also think I could get away with just letting it soak for two full days.