Monday, October 12, 2009

yet another dye day... squared

So, once i found the lemon-lime Kool-Aid, and wrestled my yarn into large loops secured with scrap yarn, i set about in dyeing bogey-colored yarn.



First i soaked the yarn in the same large pot as last time: i think that i had more length with the lemon yarn that i dyed orange, but this yarn is definitely thicker, and filled the pot to about 2/3 instead of 1/3. Next i emptied the Kool-Aid into an empty bowl and filled that bowl with water, stirring to dissolve the powder completely before pouring it over the yarn.

+
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i heated the yarn, but it didn't even get anywhere near a boil before all the Kool-Aid was gone from the water. After steaming it for about 20 mins i let it cool, eventually draining the yarn and hanging it to drip dry. i liked the progress i had seen in the midst of the heating:



Unfortunately, though the yarn floating nearer the top of the pot turned out beautifully (albeit a little darker than i envisioned in the middle of the dyeing process), the yarn on the bottom... didn't.



Whole spans of yarn with no dye at all, and blotches of a decidedly blue-green hue. i was of course a little upset, but relieved that this did not happen in my last project, with more expensive yarn. If need be, i could always buy more yarn (i've found it online for even cheaper than i paid for it at work), but i decided it would be cheaper to buy more Kool-Aid, dye it again, and just live with the mistake. Now i know to not dye so much yarn at a time. i bought four more packets today, and dyed again, and the color seems to have come out well (no pictures yet, it's still drying), thought just a hair darker than the other skein, and of course with no hope of fixing the blue-green bits. i'm not sure yet how hard it will be to work around this error.

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