Friday, September 18, 2009

Some Dye-ing Adventures

So what does a single girl do on a Friday night....Why, dye yarn she has been hoarding in her stash for years!!!
I've had this light blue yarn, I bought on Ebay, years ago. It is a brand called Tuna. It is not a super soft yarn, but it would make a great felted bag. The original color was a very pale blue. I decided to over-dye it in a dark blue. The most common color in my wardrobe.

So I went at it with some RIT dye (as I cannot wait to order proper acid dyes), some old pans I got at a garage sale, and my basement sink. I've experimented with dyeing a little, so I know the general procedure. I have to say the color came out exactly as I wanted.
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Pay no attention to the junk on the shelves. Wow, I need to clean those shelves off!
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It was a bit of a struggle to dye the 5 skeins. Hats off to the Indy dyers who do large lots of 1 color!! You are my heroes!!!

NEXT....
There was so much color left in the sink water.. I thought, what the heck, I have 4 skeins of a bright yellow Cascade EcoWool (another rash bidding effort on Ebay). Let's dye that too.

Do you know how heavy and bulky 4 skeins of EcoWool is????......when it's wet! Well, Ii do, now. I think it went about 15 pounds. I had to carry the wool downstairs dripping wet (because brianiac here, couldn't soak it downstairs as I had a sink full of blue dye from Dye Job No. 1). But as you can see it's in the sink.
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I put the bags on top of it to be sure it was all submerged into the dye solution.

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This is the experiment yarn I threw into the dye when I was doing the Tuna yarn. I'm hopeful the yarn is going to come a out this dark shade of Olive Green with some blue and yellow undertones.

This is much better than the Screaming Yellow the yarn was originally. The yellow was not a bad color...just nothing I would ever wear, and I have more than 1600 yards of this stuff...It's crying out to be a sweater from A Fine Fleece or an Alice Starmore gansey.

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