Sunday, October 28, 2007

Dyeing to meet you


I've been spinning yarn for a couple of custom orders, and since I'm not the fastest at spinning, it's taken me a while to get this yarn spun. This yarn started out white, but that wasn't the color requested so it was "Time to dye". Cue the sinister voice because it is almost halloween.
While I've been knitting since 4th grade, and spinning for about 6 years now, I don't often dye yarn or fiber, so I was a little scared. I wasn't sure I would get the red-violet that I needed. I'm not sure if I got exactly the right color, but hopefully, I'm close.
I think you could call this yarn the undead, because it has actually "Dyed" twice. The first dyeing, with Easter egg dyes, left it a lovely violet, but it needed to be more red. I over dyed the violet with a red dye to push the color more towards the red side. I some how managed to do this without felting the yarn, which was a great relief. I used the methods in the book "I Dyed Laughing", for casserole dying. This method is great! I presoaked the yarn in a vinegar solution, then put the yarn in the dye solution in a disposable aluminium roaster. I covered the roaster with tinfoil, then put the roaster in a 350 degree oven for 15 mins. I then added some boiling water to the pan so that the yarn wouldn't burn. I took the roaster out of the oven after 15 more minutes and left the yarn to cool in the roaster. The first time, with the Easter egg dyes, the water was clear when I finished, but the second time, with a Rit dye, the water was still red. I think it didn't exhaust because of the type of dye I used. I'm going to try this again with some real acid dyes in the future. With the right dyes and careful calculation I probably wouldn't have to dye the yarn twice to get the color I want.

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