Thursday 6 November 2014

Shades of grey

I've spun enough dark charcoal grey merino with white silk and white merino and silk to make a sweater but to me the white and charcoal were too eyepopping for the design I had chosen. So I decided to dye the white in shades of grey. After Tracy's course I had enough confidence to try repeat dyeing. My test skein (the top one) used from left no dye, black dye at 0.2%, 0.02%, no dye, black at 1%, 0.1%. The 1% was too dark - I felt it didn't have enough contrast with my other yarn, the dark charcoal.

I opted for no dye, 0.02%, 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.1%, 0.02%, and no dye. I put markers on the bench to show the length to paint each dye. With a large sheet of plastic over the markers, I lay out my cling film and started applying the dye. I"m thrilled with the result. It's what I wanted and each dyed skein is similar to the others. There is no felting and no runover of dye.
I did some other dyeing too and kept all the water I'd used to rinse the brush and the containers. At the finish I tipped this rinse water into the dyepot, added some fleece. This gave me a lovely soft mauve. Previously I would have thrown the rinse water onto the grass. Thank you Tracy.
Here's the two yarns knitted together. You can see the subtle gradations of the dyed yarn.

Tracy White dyes

After our Open Day some keen dyers took part in a 2 day workshop run by Tracy White called Double Dyeing. Here are some photos.
 My samples of alpaca, silk, fleece, yarn and sliver after the first day. Tracy organised the workshop so we all contributed to a colour card which had dyed samples of  each combination of colour the group had used. What I appreciated the most was Tracey's attitude to dyeing. She made sure she used every part of the dye rather than add toxic dye into the ecosystem.
 Samples after day 2.

Gael concentrating on dyeing.