I've been dyeing. This is a commercial white tweedy bit that was an awfully, stark shade of white. I've not yet found a project that particular shade of white worked with, so each time, I dyed it. I'd bought 10 or 15 balls on super sale. The last two balls were turned into large skeins, tied with 4 ties and ceremonially dumped into a pot of grey weak acid dye. I used a 1% dye stock with vinegar as my acid. It's still wet here, but it turned out perfectly.
This is fibre reactive dyes on superwash Merino. The brightness of the colours always bring me joy. I learned to dye wool with fibre reactive dyes, using a 2% stock solution. The last time I mixed up dyes, I'd just done new acid dyes at 1% and did the same with the fibre reactive dyes. However, what I found was gorgeous colours on wool, that exhausted, rather than leaving excess dye to wash out. I'll need to explore this more.
Pumpkin coloured acid dyes on superwash Merino mill ends. In the pot, this was gorgeous. However, despite getting it to temperature for more than enough time, when I rinsed it, yellow dye kept running off. I put it back in the pot, with more vinegar, brought it up to temperature, kept it there for an hour again. Despite the dye pot water exhausting, it still ran yellow when rinsed. I tried one more time, dumping in a whole whack load of vinegar. I heated it for almost 2 hours. So far it seems okay, but it's lost those lovely variations in colour and the oranges of sort of melded into one shade.
Speaking of orange - gratuitous photo of a lounging Phil. He can be very vocal and pushy when he wants to be petted. He has a much nicer coat, after a year of decent food. When he adopted us and we let him in the house, he had almost no undercoat. I don't think he would have survived the winter outside. He would sleep under the covers on the very cold evenings. He still does like a cuddle on cooler days.
nice, you could name the orange colourway phil - fits perfectly:) and I wouldn't tone down the lovely colours on the bobbin with dark blue - I'd chain ply to keep the vibrancy! you can always knit or weave it up later with something more muted if it's too much?
ReplyDeleteI used to have an orange tabby with the color of your pumpkin bath. I wove some towels in his colorway in fact. You’ve made me think - I’ve always been told that fiber reactive dyes don’t work on animal fibers. I’ll have to try it with a small sample first. Curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought him back :-)
ReplyDeleteBettina, I ended up plying a sample of the bright colours with dark blue. While it toned the colours down a bit, it also kept them clear, with distinct colour changes. I rather liked it. The upside to that as well, is that I'll have a lot more yarn to work with in the end.
ReplyDeleteSharon, You can use Fibre Reactive dyes on wool, but you need to use them like an acid dye. Don't use soda ash as a fixative as it will harm the wool fibres. A tiny bit of sythropol or other detergent and vinegar or citric acid are needed to fix the dyes.
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