Another Dye Day

Our Fiber To Finish Indigo Dye Day was fantastic! I put the photos here. My home-grown hand-spun indigo dyed mohair lace yarn is now ready to become something for the F2F Shades of Blue gallery show.

Sunday was another dye day for me. After talking "dye" with everyone on Saturday, I stopped by WallyWorld and bought a pack each of Rit black and Dylon black (can anyone tell me why the Rit is in the grocery section and the Dylon is in the craft section? Geez!).

I finished spinning a 3-ply worsted weight (350 yds) last week that I'd started last year. It was miles and miles of singles so it had become a chore. But in order to free up some bobbins, it was necessary to Geet-Ur-Done! It was a big blob of white with no project in mind. Well, look and see what happened.

First I soaked the blob-o-white:


Then I added the black Dylon dye (following their directions, I used salt water in this step):


I let it sit in the sun for a couple of hours (or maybe only one; I was impatient!) Sun cooking wasn't in the directions, and it didn't work like I expected, but wait for it...


It turned out grey. The cotton ties did take the black quite well. I don't know what it would take to make the wool completely black. However, grey is really what I wanted anyway.


Then I added koolaid. I just love the simplicity of koolaid dyeing and I've been trying to figure out how to make different colors (like brown: yellow+purple, soon). I made a nice green with orange and berry blue. And I used come colors I had already mixed: berry blue, black cherry, grape, and grape+berryblue+blkcherry. My solar oven disappeared as a thunder storm passed over, so I put my pan of koolaid-wool in the oven on the very lowest temp I could get (less than 140 I think) and let it sit for an hour. Here are my results:


Finished:


Drying:

Experiment successful:

Now I think this yarn wants to be one of my special triangle scarves (my own "Lost Shawl" pattern. There is enough yardage and the color mix should look pretty good.