More Adventures to Dye For

Since I've started practicing more and more with acid dyes, I thought it would be fun to do a small demonstration of the difference between setting dye in water and setting dye by steam when using multiple colours.  This week I'm going show what happens with the water setting and next week I'm going to show what happens with the steam setting.

For both batches I'm going to do a speckling of yellow and purple on white, because it's one of my favourite colour palettes and it will better show if colours bleed or muddy.  

I added the colour to these skeins by dipping my (gloved) finger tips into the dye mixture and dripping and smearing the dye where I thought it should be.  It wasn't the most elegant system, but it was fantastically fun and almost certainly how I'll be doing it in the future.  

With how much fun it was to hand paint the yarn, I did get a little disappointed when the yarn pretty immediately lost the vibrancy of colour in the water.  The longer it sat in the water, the more the colours faded and bled into the white spots.  The citric acid did very little to save the fleeting colour as well.  

Once all was said and done, this is how the yarn turned out.  The yellow (oddly enough) dominated the yarn and there were only faint ghosts of the vibrant purple I so loved.  

If you're dreading that this whole process was a wash (pun intended) don't worry, I still like how this yarn turned out for some reason and it is in the project queue to become some lusciously tall socks that keep me warm and give me further practice in turning heels.  

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned