Days of Dyeing

I signed up for the Easter Yarn Swap in our Ravelry group this month. Because of this I have been experimenting with various methods of handpainting/handdyeing yarn. My first couple of attempts were shocking but I learnt more as I kept trying. Luckily I didn't use any black so I could overdye anything I stuffed too :)

My first attempt: 125g of BWM Colonial 8 ply. I was trying to get this to be sea blue and dark brown. It was looking really good until I went to pick it up. One of the blue patches then immediately went brown and I was left with only one small blue patch left. Yep, you guessed right I didn't mop up any excess dye and used WAY too much. I tried to save this by overdyeing using the kettle stovetop method with red. It ended up a semi-solid browny mauve colour, not very interesting. My last attempt to save this yarn was successful, I found a mens beanie pattern that needed over 100g of yarn and decided to try and overdye in the microwave with the darkest manly colours I could. I ended up with sections of dark chocolate, milk chocolate, burgundy and cherry red. I call it Cherry Ripe.

Brown -Mauve colour

Cherry Ripe
I had been kettle dyeing a solid skein to match the original brown/blue combo a lovely blue colour. It turned out great but with nothing to be used with I figured I should overdye it in a more useful colour. I first attempted to handpaint sections of it in purple. These ran so I ended up overdying the whole lot using the kettle method with the same dark purple.

A bit depressed with my dyeing ability I then skeined my last ball of BWM into 100g lots. I used the handpaint method with the microwave, dividing the sections of colour and soaking up the excess dye as I went. These turned out much better:

Left to right: 1st attempt (Brown-mauve semisolid), 3rd and 4th attempts at handpainting, 2nd attempt (blue with overdyed sections of purple)

Left to right: Seaside (3rd attempt), Purple Berries (4th attempt),

Dark purple solid (2nd attempt overdyed)

Flushed with my success with the 3rd and 4th attempt I decided to try using my precious 200g of 4BF. I divided it up into 140g for a variegated colourway and 60g for a co-ordinating solid. I was trying for a dark purple, mid purple and deep red combo, with a dark purple solid to match. The colours turned out the depth I wanted but there are white patches throughout. Unfortunately I ran out of the mid purple dye so I have to wait until this arrives to fix it up.

Purple Night

Dark purple solid

I decided to also try my hand at kettle dyeing variegated yarn. I was trying for a semi-solid red/pink combo with this attempt. Unfortunately I did it in two batches so the first 100g are as I wanted but the second 100g is more of a solid colour. I've since worked out that it is really hard to replicate colourways using this method as they run if there is too much water in the pot. I'm going to try with another 100g to get the variegated colourway again soon.

Strawberry Semi-solid set

My last dyeing attempt was on some pale green Dashing I had. I wanted to replicate the Seaside colourway I had done previously on the BWM and do a 50g skein in a co-ordinating green to match. It worked pretty well :)

Seaside Skeined

Seaside Colourway on Dashing

This is what I ended up sending Tanya for my contribution to the Easter Yarn Swap. Along with some choccies as well of course!

Dyeing Near-Disaster

I tried my hand at kettle dyeing this month for the first time ever. I was trying to dye 500g (in 50g skeins) of Spotlight Dashing in a very dark purple using some Gaywool Dye from Dyelicious. I was going to use it for a shrug KAL on Woolaholics. After my first attempt I ended up with 4 skeins of dark purple, 4 mid purple and 2 lighter variegated purple.

After getting emergency help on Woolaholics and from my Ravelry knitting buddies I ended up finding a new way to do it. I had enough dye left over to re-dye 4 of the skeins. Instead of putting the dye mix into hot water it was better to put it in with the yarn cold and heat it up gradually. This let the colour disperse more evenly between the skeins.

This is what I ended up with: 8 skeins of lovely even dark purple (shown balled below) and 2 slightly variegated dark purple skeins. I even ended up having some dye left in the pot. I use it to dye this last little skein light purple. Very pretty colour, I wish I had done more this colour LOL!

I haven't actually ended up making the shrug as it has turned quite cool recently. There doesn't seem much point doing it right now. I might do it next year now I have the yarn all ready, hmmm .... maybe ;)

First Dyeing attempt

This was my first attempt at dyeing wool. I didn't like the colour of the newborn PP I had made the bubs. The day before I went into labour I decided to try and dye them using food colouring. I was aiming for graduated colours of green. I ended up with lime green, mid forest green, dk forest green.

Unfortunately the colour was not set very well on the bottom of the legs and we learnt the hard way that the colour runs onto sheets once the longies get wet LOL! I have decided to just use these longies for day use when Cadence doesn't sleep as long and therefore is not as wet by changing time.