Shaft!
Nope. It's me and It's I--whichever you prefer.
Because I just wasn't comfortable with that pale green color for socks, I finally decided to re-dye it after doing many swatches with different combos of yarns, needle sizes, etc. I wanted to go a little darker and a little duller. I reskeined the yarn and put it in the giant pot to soak. I mixed up some kelly green Wilton's. Then for the dull I went to the strawberry Kool-Aid I'd used last time. I'd only used a bit before and had saved the rest in the envelope. Figuring that I had about 2/3 of a pack left, I dumped it into my dye mix. To my horror, the whole thing turned a terrible greenish purplish brown. It was putrid! Here comes the wtf? . . .wait for it. . . I poured the evil fluid into the bath with the yarn. Pour it down the drain? No sir! Stan Laurel and I both know it'll be just fine, if not better.
OK, I'll leave it in a brief time only, thought I. Again, wtf? because I left it in too long. It's now olive green withbrown streaks. The brown is beautiful actually--You can't get that on purpose. In the mean time I think it will be too dark to use with the forest green I have for the socks. We'll see how it is when it's completely dry, but I knew right away that it's back to the drawing board for a new light green yarn. Get a load of what happened.
In the meantime there was a lot of dye left in the water and I decided to reskein the KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud laceweight I had earlier wound into a ball and put it in the bath. (Yep, that's what I was doing while I was leaving the other yarn in too long.) So I dropped the hank in and after awhile it was a sort of a tan, almost metallic looking. It was actually a very nice color if you're into tans, which I am not. Therefore, I decided to add more red. The only red Kool-Aid I had left was black cherry. It wasn't my first choice, but hey, what the hell? I used 2 envelopes and got a very nice mauvey-burgundyish shade. It dried much more brown and I like it a lot. I don't like working with yarn finer than sewing thread (for real) but I think I know where it's going to go if I can manage to wind it yet again.
There is still a lot of dye left in the dyebath. So now I have 2 hanks of yarn hanging in the bathroom and a lot of lovely dyebath. So I boiled it down for a while, but then I had to go to bed. I want to be able to use it for painting skeins, so it needs to be less dilute. I'll see if I get a chance to boil it down some more tomorrow.
I have already ordered new yarn. Brown Sheep Wildfoote in Mistletoe. <—Look! In the road, a pun!
3 comments:
I love your dye results. Have fun!
It reminds me of a certain bowl of cupcake batter and too many drops of food coloring.
Hah! It reminds me of several bowls of cupcake batter that have passed through my oven. Many is the purplish-grey cupcake I've baked. It also reminds of a certain batch of peach preserves. Gack!
Post a Comment