I'm dyeing, I'm dyeing...

A while ago a friend put me onto The AntiCraft! website which has a whole range of craft projects that vary in type and complexity.  And I found Melusine, a lovely hand dyed shawl that not only was my first 'hey, you can dye knitting after knitting' but also went on to explain 'and here is how'.  Since one important part is being able to heat set the dye but they pointed out that placing the material in a black plastic bag and placing it into a hot car, and since I live in Australia (which is known for hot!) it seemed providential!

So a knitting I went.  I had some 2 ply wool/silk yarn in my stash that was waiting for inspiration so it seemed povidential.  But since I have never dyed anything before and since it took a long time to make the shawl, I thought it prudent to make a few mini versions to experiment with.  And here's my dye results.

The first I tried was a blue green version.  The colours set incredibly well but were a little darker than I think I like so if I go with this for the big one, I'll cut back on the black dye.  Particularly for the greens


I also didn't have any paint brushes handy so I used cotton buds.  These allowed for great control of the dying, but it took much longer than I thought it would.  When sitting on concrete outside hunched over a small scarf, this is Not A Good Thing.

The long time and the weather meant I had a break before doing the next one- I was NOT going to sit outside on a 40+º C day.  Today was cooler (bliss!) so I set up for number 2.

This one was inspired by one I saw on Ravelry.  However, I had a number of technical issues that made this a challenge.  First was that for some strange reason the yellow and red dyes did not dissolve nicely the way that the two green and two blue stocks I had despite them all coming from the same company (Jaccard Acid Dyes) and using the same method (chemistry is strange!).  The yellow didn't dissolve well which was annoying but not the end of the world.  The red though, was just strange.

Initially it was fine- placed the powder into warm water.  Dissolved the lot, no problems.  Then the stock cooled.  Except it didn't just cool, it partially set.  Think jelly made up with a bit too much water.  The resulting mix was very viscous, sludgy and a bit lumpy.  Couple this with the bright red colour and the result does have a disturbing resemblance to prop blood from CSI or something similar

It also was a pain to measure out into the working mixture since it was so incredibly viscous.  I ended up with the scientific measure of 'a gloop' and stirring like crazy to try and get it mixed into the mix with limited success.

And to top it all off there is a big splodge where the fabric slipped when wrapping it in gladwrap for heat setting the dye- so a big dark bit was in contact with a yellow bit.  You can see the resulting splodge on the left hand side in the photo above.  *sigh*

Still, it could all be worse- this all could've happened on my big shawl!  Weather is warming up again next week so I'll see if I can get this done before it's too hot and/or I have to go back to work.