Yarn dyeing adventures

Who knew that you could use up 750 grams of salt in a single yarn dyeing afternoon, come out with only two colours and have to stop yourself there because you've run out of salt?

Right. (I bought more salt and stored it with the dyes this time. Needless to say I haven't gotten around to dyeing any more yarn just yet...)

So I had myself a bit of a yarn dyeing adventure.

I had bought three skeins of Colinette Jitterbug in Colourway Frangipani off ebay or somewhere like that.  I don't know if someone didn't like their purchase any more and needed to sell them on or what, but they were cheaper and I couldn't resist.  Even though I thoroughly disliked the colours.

Here is what it looked like before:

The light wasn't very good

This one is better but doesn't catch the colours as well

Throw into some Dylon Flamingo Pink, and the result is this:

Gorgeous, isn't it?  I really love those colours.  I expected the green bits to turn brown and perhaps only the very light areas to be these lighter shades of pink but the result is better than I thought. I am glad I tried this.

I have plans for this yarn! Plans, I tell you, promising plans! (to be revealed at another time)

Seeing as I was dyeing 300 grams with two sachets that are good for 500 grams, I also chucked an undyed skein in, and this it here:

This is my favourite colour so I am extremely pleased that I added this yarn. I don't remember where I got this sock yarn from, it may have been from Violet Green (the url is now sockyarn.co.uk) or from Ally Pally, a few years back.

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The one skein I tried first and that I had lots more problems with, turned out like this at first:

I used Dylon Powder Pink and it didn't take very well. It looks like the yarn is blushing!  This shade is much too insipid for me.

I think it is because the undyed yarn was too yellowy.  If I had used this dye on white cotton, the result is likely to have been much different and better.

So what to do?

If in doubt, chuck more dye at it.  And boy, did I do that!

I used the Dylon Intense Violet on the still wet skein and quickly saw that the colour while still wet was too light for my taste (and colours are bound to get lighter when they dry).  Much more an Iris violet than the colour I was aiming for.  I also don't like Iris so I ramaged through my dye sachets.

Knowing that I had bought way too many colours way too long ago and not done anything with them so far, I felt that it didn't much matter how many dye sachets I was using up.  Using them up at all is a good thing!

I was dithering between the navy blue and the mid blue that Dylon do.  I was leaning towards the darker colour but was worried that this would render the purple rather dull.  Which would have been extremely discouraging where future dyeing is concerned (I didn't think I'd do more that same afternoon).  So the mid blue it was:  another sachet of Dylon's Ocean Blue. I chucked this in with the Violet after ten minutes and then left the whole thing an additional ten minutes to do its thing.

And I must say I am happy with this colour - I can definitely live with it:

 

This is still a bit more 'Iris' in shade than I had hoped but darker than my first attempt with the Intense Violet on its own.

One day I will also try dyes from another firm to see how their shades compare.

Finally using this lace yarn

I am finally using this Fyberspates Scrumptious lace yarn in slate grey*:

And I am making this:

I am so happy I am using up a yarn that has long lived in my stash, always waiting for the 'perfect' project and never getting used.


Now I am using it and it knits wonderfully well.  I am so pleased I am finally giving this a go.

The pattern is a Niebling pattern from the orange Kunstrick-Decken book.


PS *: Except that this colour is not the Slate Grey colourway but their shade called 504 Water.  It even says so on the label, as clear as day...

PS2: The shawl is coming along very nicely!