Tales From the Dye Journal

I have a new hobby. It involves fibre. I'm so sorry.

Last year I got really interested in dyeing (Saying that out loud gives me an embarrassing case of the giggles. Homonyms.) As I was saying, I started playing with some natural dyes, starting with indigo, which is a surprisingly stinky dye. It was good fun and I made my bestie (Moira) some denimy handspun. I also experimented with cutch and kool-aid. These were all neat, but I've been wanting to sink my teeth into a bit of acid dyeing, so I went for it. I got some jacquard dye, but mostly I've been working with the Greener Shades line which is supposed to be a little bit less toxic.

Blue Braids

I have about a pound of Rambouillet top to play with right now, so I decided to use this to experiment with dye. 

I used two separate 4 oz braids that I purchased from Crystal Creek Fibers on Etsy. This fibre has a micron count of 21.5 and I paid 16.75 CAD including shipping, which was the best price I saw by a wide margin.

To make my dye stock I added 1 tsp each of River Blue and Coral Reef Aqua in 2 cups of water. I made a second jar with 1/2 tsp of Amethyst Purple in 1/2 cup of water. 

I soaked my fibre in a sink full of water with 2 cups of white vinegar.

I decided to pour all of my blue dye stock into a large stock pot 1/2 full of water with another cup of white vinegar. I let it get just below a simmer, laid a stick across the top of the pot and draped my wool braids (folded double) over the stick so that the bottoms of the braids were immersed in the dye. I let it sit for a couple of minutes and poured some of the amethyst dye over the white fibre on the stick. I also sprinkled a tiny bit of pink Jaquard I-dye over the very tops then I removed the stick and let the braids submerge. After 20 minutes at a near-simmer the fibre was very saturated... and so was the water. I used too much dye. 

I removed the braids to let them cool and threw in some washed Pembrooke fleece I had sitting around - just because I didn't want to waste the dye. I had to throw in a bit of citric acid, but eventually I did exhaust the dye bath. 

The end result was surprisingly lovely! It's certainly more saturated than I intended, but it has some interesting character and the purple and pink didn't end up being totally eaten up by the blue, which  is really nice. 

Not too shabby :)

Fuschia's Flowin'

This little project came about because I heard I'm supposed to knit a special sweater to wear at Rhinebeck. Since I'm running low on time I decided to make it a bulky number. I bought some undyed Swish Bulky and decide to go with something along the red/purple spectrum and VIBRANT.

To make my dye stock, I added 1 tsp of  Ruby Red and 1/2 tsp of Amethyst Purple to 2 cups of water. After the fiasco with too much blue dye I decided to be more conservative with my dye usage. While all turned out well, another important lesson is to make more dye stock than I think I'll need - it can always be saved for another day, and sometimes you need more than you think you do.

I used the same "wool over the stick" trick as with the Blue Braids, and even sprinkled with pink Jaquard, but this time I didn't have enough dye stock in my pot. I did four 100gm skeins at a time with half my dye stock, and while the pot is big enough to hold this, it required a lot more dye. I ended up with big white patches in my yarn. I thought using pink might be cute, so I added about 1 1/2 tsp of the pink powder overtop of the white area. It came out super cute, but still had more white showing than I was happy with.

I ended up mixing a half-batch of the original dye stock, adding a Tbsp of citric acid, and using a squeeze bottle to apply it handpaintystyle, then steam set all 800 grams at once in my big pot.

After it was all done, I gave it a nice vinegar soak and warm water wash, and now it's lovely and I can't wait to use it to knit my Rhinebeck sweater!!

A PSA about dyeing:

I've heard that when dyeing skeins of yarn you should have at least three figure-8 ties. Make 4.