Dude, it works!
I did my first experiment in dyeing today! I used some Gaywool dyes that I got from Juniper Designs earlier this summer, but hadn’t had the guts to use yet. BTW, that vendor is marvelous. I got the dyes super fast in the mail, and she threw in a free sample of a lovely brown shade that I ended up using today, and which may have made the difference.
I’ll post before and after shots once the skeins are dry, but here’s the gist: I had some really lovely 50/50 alpaca/tencel blend yarn that wasn’t quite the shade I need for a project. I need a red/brick red or maroon/black set for the tri-colored Icelandic Triangle shawl from Folk Shawls, and the closest the loverly Cultured Purls had to maroon was a lovely, soft, beautiful berry color. I could’ve gotten the white, but I figured overdying the berry might work out a little better for me.
I’m done with my first skein of the really bright red yarn, and I (rightly, I think) figure that it’ll take a couple of days for the dyed skeins to dry. So I took a before shot of the skeins, and girded my loins for battle.
Now, Gaywool dyes are, as far as I can tell, the idiot proof dyes of the wool coloring world. They have all the mordants and, uh, crap in them to make the dye strike well. You just toss in a capful of the color to every 4oz of yarn into hot water, mix it up, and add the mix to a pot of boiling water. Enough to cover the yarn. And away you go!
And you know what? It really was just that simple. Since I’m aiming for a dark shade, and the lighting in the kitchen sucks, I didn’t take pics of the dyeing process. I actually read the directions first too, which was a big plus. I did remember that the skeins should probably be wet before dyeing, and since I can’t find the bottle of synthrapol I bought a while back, I just added a bit of dish detergent to the water I soaked the yarn in to get it nice and wet and ready. Which sounds kinda filthy, now that I re-read that, but we’ll let it go.
ANYWAY, I dutifully donned my mask and gloves, used some disposable things to mix the dye up, and? OK, here I have to admit that I just winged it. I had four 50g skeins, so I mixed a full cap of Tomato with a little over half a cap of Indigo, with a glomp or so of the brown. Tossed it in a clean, used Fage Greek Yogurt tub (btw, if you haven’t had that? DIVINE! Especially with honey!), which was 2/3 full of the hottest water from the tap (very hot, btw, and it’s scalded me on more than one occasion), and stirred with a plastic knife. Voila! A scary looking mix of…something.
Once the pot on the stove was boiling, I added the dyestuff, stirred it up and then gingerly lowered the sacrifical yarn in. According to the directions, 80% of the dye will strike in the first four minutes. D’oh! This is where some random kitchen implement came in handy. It’s a big…fork. A meat fork, or something, that the previous occupant left behind. It’s now dedicated to turning over limp, heavy, uncooperative skeins of yarn that are swishing around in boiling, stinky (from the yarn, not the dye), scary looking vats of dye.
I flipped, I turned, I lifted and let drain, and generally poked and prodded it for the first four minutes as directed. I do wonder if I felted the damn skeins, but since they always look completely pathetic and bedraggled when they’re wet, I can’t really tell here at the end. Anyway, I very gently swished them around every few minutes for 30 mintues total, then turned off the heat and wandered away to do some reading.
Something like three hours later, I remembered that I had been in the middle of a project, and went to check on everything. I’m fairly surprised, but pleased to say that the bath almost completely exhausted. I think I used a bit more dye than necessary (I was thinking 50g was more like 2.2oz, instead of the 1.7636981 ounces the google calculator tells me it is), so I’m not surprised the water had a faint rusty brown tinge to after removing the yarn.
The yarn itself? Holy cow if it dries to what I think it’ll be, I managed to get nearly the exact shade I was looking for. How ’bout that?! Spank my ass and call me Charlene if I really did get it right the first time.
Anyway, I’ll post in a couple of days once the skeins are dry with before and after pictures. I’m doing a bit of a Harlot and am attemping to resist the urge to turn the heat on until it’s absolutely necessary. Of course, she lives in Canada, and I’m in the fairly temperate, if soggy, Seattle, so my determination to make it until November seems pretty wussy in comparison.
So, it’ll be a couple of days until the skeins are ready for a photo shoot. I hope to have knit the shawl to the point where I *need* the skeins by then, but with the New Job (bwee!) starting on Tuesday, who the hell knows what’ll happen.
Stay tuned!