Thursday, May 31, 2012

Dyeing by the Lock

All those white locks looked pretty boring to me so I just had to add some color to them. I did not want to spend months spinning only white again. Been there. Done that. Over it.

I wanted them to be a pale pink but I had to worry about how to add the color without disturbing the locks.
I gave them a dunk in some very diluted Jacquard Fire Red dye and then piled them up on trays that I could microwave. The Mister's love of Chinese food keeps us well stocked in these plastic containers. I used the lids.

 I stacked all the trays on top of each other and them put them all in one zip lock bag and gave them a 20 minute steaming of 2 minutes on and 2 minutes of rest.


The dyeing worked very well but I still have no idea if they are actually clean enough to spin. The sun has to do its job for a few days before I'll know if all this work was worth it.

5 comments:

  1. About how many ounces of wool is that? It doesn't look like quite enough for all of that work...but photos can be deceiving so I thought I would ask. Will it be enough for a pair of socks or a hat or will you just end up dyeing more as you need it? Very curious about this process!

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    1. This ended up to be only about 40 grams of wool. There is also lots of waste when you comb out Cormo so I will have even less. This was only an experiment to see if it was worthwhile to do since washing Cormo is a nightmare. One day, I will take the remainder and finish washing and dyeing it this way as it did dry beautifully (post to come). I wish I had done this with my really nice Cormo locks as I pretty much ruined them. Next year, I will pick up more Cormo at the MDSW since, although it is tedious, this is a very good way to wash it. The resulting yarn is like heaven!

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    2. Out of curiosity, I just went through this whole process again. It took me less than an hour to wash and dye another 40 grams. I could easily have done more if I were not dyeing in the microwave. I could do a shawl's worth in a few days at this rate. It was much less tedious this time. Dunk, soap, rinse, rinse, dye. Done!

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  2. Lovely blush pink color!
    I see that you have pics of your color affection shawl!!! You're fast!

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    1. Good eyes!! Yes, the Color Affection is done. I think the post on it will come tomorrow.

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