Actual proper dyeing





After mucking about with food colouring for a while, I thought it was time to start doing some actual proper dyeing, with actual proper dyes. I bought some acid dyes on-line, read through the completely inadequate instructions, looked at proper instructions thank you google, translated it into metric because I live in a normal country, and wrote it all down.

Actual proper dyeing requires that you weigh the yarn. As you can see, there are two different ones here - the 100% wool cream two ply I got from Bendigo Woollen mills ages and ages ago, and a slightly heavier 50/50 wool acrylic blend from Ice. I was thinking the blend would dye a pastel, and I wanted some nice yellows to go with a variegated wool I have. I dyed it still twisted up in the hank, because I wanted some bits to be dark and some bits to be light.

Actual proper dyeing requires that you have a saucepan that is NOT USED FOR FOOD PREPARATION. I went to the op shop and got a $8 stock pot. It is surprisingly good quality, with nice high sides, a solid bottom and a glass lid.

Then you mix it together and boil it like a bastard. I took this photo through the glass lid, and had my first inkling that this wasn't actually going to be the nice golden yellow that the label said it would be. That this would actually turn out to be very bright and very ugly safety orange.

Except for the blend of course, which went a very nasty apricot. And I wasn't quite expecting there to be so much white left in the wool. So after it had been rinsed and dried I over-dyed it. Basically put it back into a nice sky-blue dye pot, thinking that it would go a pretty green on the orange bits and blue on the white bits.

HELL NO. The wool went bottle green and khaki, with patches of orange still peeping through, and the blend went a very very strange grey! Maybe a greenish grey, but not at all the dainty grass shade I was expecting.  I think I might have boiled some of the yellow out of it? Is that even possible?

I am not too upset because they are definitely colours I will use (maybe not together) but dyeing is just a complete lottery, even with measuring. The only bright spot was that it exactly matches the two large zucchini sitting on the kitchen bench. Camouflage wool, if you ever find yourself in a zucchini patch.