Sun-dye and Mon-dye fun

I’ve had a few weekends off the dyeing project, busy travelling around and such; but despite the weekend spent hunter-gathering second-hand delights, I did manage to squeeze in a few hours of dyeing on Sunday and Monday evenings.

After achieving the lovely shade of Turquoise with the Blue food colouring previously, I thought I would have another bash with a different brand (kindly given on loan by my colleague Enid) and what a success it was!  I also took the opportunity to use my new citric acid pot, complete with it’s own spoon…yes, tupperware makes me excited.

I could tell straight away that it would be blue-ming(!) marvellous as the colour in the pan was much darker than before, and when I steeped the yarn it quickly turned much darker and richer.

The first pan created this lovely blue marl effect, but as I was looking for something darker, I dipped it once more. The final result is this lovely Navy colour with a more subtle marl.  I will definitely look at making a more contrasting marled yarn next time though as it would look amazing when knitted-up!

So, happy with my blue yarn (and having reignited the dyeing itch) I moved onto the Orange yarn on Monday.

Having read a little about the use of food colouring as yarn dyes, I discovered that yellow and red colouring could be troublesome due to the chemicals that make them up sometimes separating out (brought on by the heat) which made would make mixing colours difficult, but still worth a go I felt!

At first glance the colour in the pan seemed to be good, so I thought that there was a small chance of getting a shade close to where I wanted it to be…however, the blonde yarn that I ended up with suggested otherwise!  The colour remained mostly in the pan, and any more orange yarn was quickly washed out.

It took a few more dips (probably more than is advisable as the skein began to felt-up by my fourth attempt!) but I eventually managed to get what I shall call, Peach Melba!  Although it isn’t edible like melted butter for baking, or even the tasty rissoto alongside…

It’s a soft shade with only a hint of orange, but I think when knited into stripes, it will look pretty cool with the blue…only one way to find out I suppose. Let’s knit!