And even more dyeing results.

Happy Belated Easter everyone!

Took the dyeing class last Friday at The Knitting Bee and had a lot of fun. I'll admit I was a little wary of the Culinary Colors, I think I was afraid it would be just like most food colorings like Wilton's and Kool-Aid. The plus part is that like food colorings it is non toxic and can be used without any other special equipment which is a bonus in my book. In the future I would like to try acid dyes but until I have a better setup I'll have to wait. Another plus unlike most food colorings is I didn't notice any splitting of the colors, while the effects can be very cool when they split I like to have better control when I'm trying to come up with something specific. So on the negative is they don't have a black probably to avoid the color splitting problem I mentioned above and it seems hard to get a truly saturated color. Below are the results I got on the yarn provided with the kit. (sorry for the darkness of the pics but for some reason just shots of the yarn were hard to get)


Its a silk mohair blend, Douceur Et Soie. This may also account for the subdued affect as well. Still I'm pretty happy with my results and have started knitting this lacy wrap out of it. The wrap seems to show the colors a little better.


They also allowed us to bring our own fibers as well to try so I brought some roving but unfortunately ran of time and this is what I ended up with. Still I think it may end up pretty interesting once I spin it up.



Speaking of spinning... has anyone who spins noticed a problem with it kicking fiber into the air? I moved the wheel into our room to spin when my head is bugging me especially when the boys are playing video games. The problem is that I seem to start sneezing a lot and sometimes have small issues with breathing (not that I can't breathe but that it gets uncomfortable). This wasn't a problem before but then the spinning wheel was out in the living room where we have an air filter going most of the time. I'm wondering if I need to move the wheel back out there though that means less spinning since I have to often retreat to my room when my head gets bad. I'm also wondering if its the fiber as I'm still spinning away at the blue fiber and thats a bit different then what I had been spinning before. Its still wool but the texture is different and I wonder if it kicks more than the other stuff into the air.

Trying my hand at hand painting

So I was having so much with the Wilton's I decided to try handpainting following the directions I found here. The instructions worked out pretty well except she forget to mention (and really this is more my fault because I didn't think it through) that if you use too much of the liquid when you're rolling up the fibers and have it wrapped properly so it can't squirt out the sides it will run ahead of you as you roll and "contaminate" the other colors. I was a little more generous with the dye I guess then I needed to be. I'm just lucky that I didn't end up with a huge mess!

So I really enjoyed the process and thought steaming was even better than the kettle dyeing method. Unfortunately I misjudged the colors and ended up with something that reminds me of Easter which I guess is a little fitting but nothing like I was going for. I used Wilton's Kelly Green, Teal and Golden Yellow and a little bit of Royal Blue on the middle skeins in the picture above. The yellow was more vibrant then I expected while the green and teal were lot more pastel like. Obviously I need to up the dye amount to get the deep shades that I wanted.

The skein in front in the picture above gets a little closer to what I was hoping for in some sections. The deeper shade of teal in that one middle part what was what I was hoping for. The yellow is just fine (though I somehow ended up with more of it than planned) and the green on the end (left side) is a little closer to the shade I wanted though a little more emerald like would have been better.

Now the debate is do I keep these colors and see what they're like spun up? Its tempting but I'm afraid I'll end up doing nothing with the yarn since they really aren't my colors. I can try dyeing them again but I'm unsure what that will do and I'd like to avoid turning it muddy or dull. I signed up for a hand paint class at The Knitting Bee tomorrow so hopefully I'll have some better ideas after that.