Another day of dyeing experiments

Let me preface the following by stating that even though I enjoy the process of using food colouring to dye wool yarn with Abi, I have no intention of becoming more involved with dyeing. Nope, not me.

Today we worked on creating a few small skeins of yarn that will be used to duplicate-stitch another Decepticon logo onto a black hat for Candace.  She wanted the full-colour design - complete with gradients of blue and purple.  Silly me said "okay". Hey, it seemed a better idea than doing the same grey work as Robin's hat. That would mean I did the same thing twice! No way!!

First job was to open the skein of yarn, figure out how many stitches were needed for each colour (pre-calculated earlier this week), and measure out the necessary amount, plus a lot extra to be safe.

Next the yarn has to soak for several hours. (Almost forgot that part. Good thing we were going to start early this morning and just had to push back dying to the afternoon.)

Eventually the fun starts!


We started with the blue. But apparently just plain blue food colouring results in a sort of teal or turquoise colour.  That just wouldn't do.  A drop of red fixed it nicely.  The three gradients were created by leaving the yarn in for shorter and longer intervals.  I probably won't use the lightest colour since I pulled it out before discovering the red-dye fix.

 Too light! Back in the blue-bath!

 Too teal. Time to play with the blue-bath.

 A drop of red made it much better!

 The darkest I could get it. Or I may have let it soak a little longer after this. I don't recall now.

Next Abi wanted to dye some yarn for herself, so we interrupted the scheduled dyeing of purple. She wanted blue. But then she wanted to add some drops of red directly to the pot after the yarn was in.  A couple drops turned into a lot of drops. The result is decidedly NOT blue. But it is a lovely purple. (sorry, these photos taken in the evening with a flash.) 
Then I was back to creating a less-mottled purple for the Decepticon yarn.  Again, the lightest shade is not what I wanted, so I'll just use undyed. But I think the rest came out nicely.

 Here are all the purples together. Abi's is on the right - the more mottled of the group. The pale purple [slash] pink will not be going into the hat. (Don't worry Candace.)

And, finally, it was Abi's turn again. This time she wanted pink. 4 drops each of neon purple and neon red created a very pink colour in the yarn (the water itself looked muddier).  Too pink for me... so I dropped in a couple drops of blue... you know, so it will blend better with the purple later.  I have no idea what her yarn will become.  It's just plain old wool. I can't even recall if it's Lion Brand or Paton's Classic. Either way, it was originally purchased for making wool soakers, when I thought I would need more. Before she decided to use a toilet and not grow significantly in the diaper region.

This one is still in the dye-bath.  In fact, I should probably go rinse it...

Final shot for Decepticon hat yarn: