Dying wool
I finally gave in and decided to play at dying yarn with food colouring. Since I was in a hurry I made an artistic decision to aim for uneven, semi-solid colours, or outright variegated patterns. Honest, ease of accomplishment had nothing to do with it.
The first candidate was from a charity shop: two skeins of very nice quality yarn in a revolting shade of pink.
Overdyed with a yellow-green, this gave a rather nice rusty orange, with highlights of a dull pink and an olive.
is one of the skeins slightly overexposed to show the variation more clearly.
The leftover dye produced a surprising turquoise when I stuck some cream yarn in there (I guess most of the yellow dye had been taken up by the pink straight away):
This got pretty addictive, so I wound some more of the cheap cream yarn (superwash too, which the Rowan stuff wasn't, so I could be a bit more slapdash without it felting). The damaged bits on the outsides of the balls I set aside to clean up loose dye (yay for charity shop purchases), and the remainder (about 40g a throw) got dyed separately.
First was an attempt at using fairly closely related colours: green and purple poured in at opposite ends of the bowl, with blue in between:
Second was an accident in mixing colours! I was aiming for slate blue and dull russet, and I managed to mix up greenish khaki and maroon. I thought I'd try it anyway! The result looks good in daylight, but the khaki shows a rather sickly green under incandescent/energy-saving bulbs.
There was also a golden-brown I managed to mix a small amount of (god alone knows how or why!), so some of the scraps went in that in a twist of clingfilm.
Next, I got fed up of winding damaged wool, so I dug up some nice Shetland 2-ply (hence the fluffier texture). I thought I'd have another go at the rust/grey combination, and this time I got the dye-mixes looking about right. However, they broke as soon as they hit the main water-bath, and the result has nothing in common with the colours I poured in. I like it, though:
is the less red side, while
has a huge dull red splodge where the russet dye was (as previously, some of the dyes seemed much more reluctant to strike than others; this time, though, there was a lot of yellow left over!).
is the fairly impressive lime green left over from the last.
Great fun, and not nearly as unpleasant-smelling if you heat it in the microwave (wet wool and vinegar on the hob have to be smelled to be believed).
The first candidate was from a charity shop: two skeins of very nice quality yarn in a revolting shade of pink.
Overdyed with a yellow-green, this gave a rather nice rusty orange, with highlights of a dull pink and an olive.
is one of the skeins slightly overexposed to show the variation more clearly.
The leftover dye produced a surprising turquoise when I stuck some cream yarn in there (I guess most of the yellow dye had been taken up by the pink straight away):
This got pretty addictive, so I wound some more of the cheap cream yarn (superwash too, which the Rowan stuff wasn't, so I could be a bit more slapdash without it felting). The damaged bits on the outsides of the balls I set aside to clean up loose dye (yay for charity shop purchases), and the remainder (about 40g a throw) got dyed separately.
First was an attempt at using fairly closely related colours: green and purple poured in at opposite ends of the bowl, with blue in between:
Second was an accident in mixing colours! I was aiming for slate blue and dull russet, and I managed to mix up greenish khaki and maroon. I thought I'd try it anyway! The result looks good in daylight, but the khaki shows a rather sickly green under incandescent/energy-saving bulbs.
There was also a golden-brown I managed to mix a small amount of (god alone knows how or why!), so some of the scraps went in that in a twist of clingfilm.
Next, I got fed up of winding damaged wool, so I dug up some nice Shetland 2-ply (hence the fluffier texture). I thought I'd have another go at the rust/grey combination, and this time I got the dye-mixes looking about right. However, they broke as soon as they hit the main water-bath, and the result has nothing in common with the colours I poured in. I like it, though:
is the less red side, while
has a huge dull red splodge where the russet dye was (as previously, some of the dyes seemed much more reluctant to strike than others; this time, though, there was a lot of yellow left over!).
is the fairly impressive lime green left over from the last.
Great fun, and not nearly as unpleasant-smelling if you heat it in the microwave (wet wool and vinegar on the hob have to be smelled to be believed).