Fiber Dyeing, accomplished!

Yesterday I made this:

I started with this:	And ended up with this:
From Fiber Club May 2009	From fiber dye

I changed it from “citrus” to what I think of as “almost fall foliage”. The only disappointing thing about this is that it is very green and I am not so fond of green. This was done with a packet of cherry Kool-Aid and food coloring dripper bottles. Cooked in a crock pot for about 25-30 minutes on high, at that point the dye bath was clear.

[As usual, click the pictures to go to the bigger version in the Picasa album.]

Socks Hopping

On the plus side, I am no longer a photo slacker. I have tolerable pictures of everything I bought. I posted the photos of my completed socks. I even avoided making the joke about being caught flat-footed. If you want to see more of the completed Raspberry Friday Socks, the thumbnail here links to the full-size image in the album. Or you can look at the previous post.

 

 

---

Today’s project was to pick the new sock yarn and choose a pattern. I know I want to make the “Nagini” socks from the Knitpicks “Essential” yarn. Unfortunately,  I knew right away which yarn I wanted to use next— because I am suckered in by the shiny just like everyone else. But hey, I bought that Schaefer Heather yarn for a reason.

 

So I did some looking to see if I was attracted to anything particularly. The new yarn is a bit stiff and holds stitch definition well, but I am easily dissuaded by complicated projects. I even spent some time reading the textures/motifs book I borrowed from the library. Nothing seems perfect. I did a swatch in the quilted lattice stitch and would pull out all my hair if I had to do it for a whole sock. (I have the perfect 8sts/inch gauge though.)

Before 90 people jump in and recommend “Monkey“, I really dislike that pattern. The alternate versions are somewhat better, “No Purl Monkeys“, “Staggering Monkeys“, and “Los Monos Locos“. But it starts to look like work… like I would be creating my own texture because I would prefer no yarn-overs, I know it will go faster without purling, and I want to go toe-up, and I prefer the ovals to the inverted-Y shapes.

I have come to no conclusions tonight.

Today also had the over-dyeing of the January fiber club yarn. The color is vastly improved from the sickeningly bismuth pink color. Pictures are waiting on the yarn to dry.

Pictures of Stitches West purchases later this week.

yarn and fiber (week googolplex)

I finished spinning and plying the first 8-ounce pack from CMF. I started with my least favorite color out of the ones I bought and it came out amazing. I am including a photo that shows the yarn and the fiber, obviously that is from earlier. Today’s photos ranged from over-exposed to under-exposed, so I picked the one where the spinning and plying looked the best.

last week . . . . . . . . .  this week

I almost went to the Color thing in Berkeley over the weekend. I had no good reason for not going. I did not believe them when they said there was free parking on campus. Nor did I believe them when they said it was walking distance from the BART station. But I could have found a solution. I even had food ideas for the area. Some of what kept me from going was the hassle of bringing my wheel anywhere, but I do not own a real drop spindle. That meant I was not going to participate in any of the classes. There were four vendors listed and I have seen two of them without being impressed with the quality::price ratio. I would have pushed myself if the Royal Hare people were going to be there.

And I have useful guidance for other people about pre-drafting. The first is that there are tools for fiber handling, but if you are starting from combed top, they do not really add anything. The second is after laboriously spreading and pulling fiber into snakes of barely defined air, do not wind them into balls. There is no way to use the ball of fiber. One might coil the fiber. Or one might accordion fold the fiber. But unlike balls of yarn used while knitting, a ball of fiber does not do anything but pull apart when the outer end is pulled. Pulling from the center of the ball gives tufts of fiber akin to pulling Kleenexes from the box.

I need a scale to estimate how much fiber this is. The pre-drafted fiber is enormous. Here is about half of the fiber. I have a second tub that looks just like this.

roving eye dye

My dye project from last week, which was supposed to be tri-color: gray, blue-green, blue-purple has not turned out so closely to what I envisioned. However since I like pastels and the variegation on this is pleasant and there is no felting, I am rather pleased. This is BFL from Spunky Eclectic, but if I am going to dye this amount of fiber regularly, I need a bulk source.

dye job blown

I have half of one of the lumps of CMF BFL spun and plied. I have taken pictures, but that will likely be another post. I have several finished yarns to show off and inserting pictures is cumbersome.

However, lest you think this is yet another contentless post, I wanted to talk about my dye experiment. I am pretty sure I am not doing this right. Yesterday I bought plastic tubs for dyeing. Today I folded up some roving and nestled it into the bin. Then I added acidified water. I added dye from the dye liquid (I added near boiling water to the dye pot the previous time, as is recommended by the manufacturer.) using a plastic fork. I did this with all three colors (using clean forks) in a tri-color flag arrangement (so each color is in its own band and they do not repeat.) However, the color was not effectively taken up by the wool. The dye bath remained colored (though there was very little bleeding.) I added more wool. The colors got a little muddled when I was trying to squish in the new wool which was not pre-wetted. Finally after waiting about 10 minutes, I poured off the dye bath into a second tub and looked at the wool. The reason the dye bath was not clear is because one of the colors did not take. I added some fresh water and poured the dye bath back over it. That way if the bath was too acidic, it might get better. I put it out in the sun because sunlight helps dye uptake which seems counter-intuitive since sunlight bleaches finished things.

I will take pictures of that. Here is hoping I did not felt the roving as much this time. I am going to be happy with pastel colored roving I made but I would like for the wool to be nice to work with, unlike the previous experiment’s results.

Still. I did something new after mostly failing the first time. Next time I will try for a single color, because I can add more acid or some base if the color is not uptaking correctly, but when one is and the others are not, the choice becomes difficult.

blue skies

The self-dyed roving that seemed hideously felted is spinning tolerably. If I had paid for this roving, I would have complained because it is very irritating and requires a lot of extra preparation work. However, it does spin. I have one bobbin of [1] singles and a second bobbin on the flyer. I do not know that I want to ply these. They are probably over-spun for use as singles though.

The summary being that dye mistakes are not catastrophic, many times things can still be salvaged.

Look all around, there’s nothing but blue skies…

Dyeing roving did not work too well. I got an unsatisfactory amount of felting and did not get the color separation I wanted.

First, let me say that this is entirely my fault. I did not do any research before starting the roving dye process (though I did read the instructions before dyeing yarn with the new-to-me Jacquard dyes.)

The color I got is really nice. It looks like a blue sky with a few puffy white clouds. However, since I used Spruce green and Periwinkle blue, I was expecting something else.

(This is where the post title came from, just in case you were wondering where the goofy titles arise.)

Procedure-wise. I measured out some roving (13 arm-lengths is a pound, so I used about 3-ish). I braided it so it would not “float apart”. I soaked this in luke-warm acidulated water in a 3-gallon zip-top bag (with the zipper torn off because those bags are poorly manufactured).

I added a quarter-cup of boiling water to each dye pot (the 1/2 ounce jars) to make a liquid dye. This is recommended by the manufacturer. Then I put a straw-full of dye liquid on one side of the roving braid in the bag full of acid-water. I used another straw to add another dye on the other side. There was very little uptake of dye.

Eventually I drained out most of the dye water from the bag and put the bag of wet roving in the steaming pot.

There are several points at which I believe I erred.

1. braiding the roving. This is a stupid idea. If the roving is going to come apart, dead nylon hose would have been a better choice to hold it together.
2. I did not use soap. Soap increases dye uptake and reduces white spots.
3. I smooshed the fiber around way too much.
4. not using a drinking straw for the second color of dye (turns out that “straw” was blocked up)
5. I used too much citric acid powder

I did pull the drying roving into vertical strips and it will be spinnable, though not effortless like some of the professionally dyed rovings have been. Of course even the professionally dyed rovings have had chewy sections.

My current plan, after having read all sorts of advice from other people’s blogs and websites, is to work outside, tape newspapers down, add a plastic tarp, spread plastic wrap into a long length for each roving. Additionally I plan to pre-dissolve the acid powder in hot water and to pre-soak the roving in cold water (which has had the acid and some soap mixed in). Then I will drain the soaking water off, lay the roving out along the plastic wrap, and paint the dyes on. This painted roving will sit out in the sun. When it is dry or mostly dry, I will carefully wrap it in plastic wrap and steam it. When that is cool, I will rinse it and rinse it again.