Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Dye Day Details

Some people have an idea of what my dyeing was about. Well, at least half of it! The blanks were from Machine Knitting to Dye For. I'm going to unravel and ball the yarn and make a hat using the pattern that came with the two blanks.

Now for the roving. I've been mulling over ideas about blending different colors of dyed fiber to get a color that I can't get by dyeing alone. I have about 100 grams of each colorway and I'll sample different ways of blending. Two I've done already are stripping the roving and blending by attenuating, which Deb Menz explained in during the SOAR retreat classes a couple of years ago. She also explains blending on a carder in Color in Spinning. I've tried a couple of times, but not with any planning or forethought. This time I want to take the dyed roving, try several methods and then knit up small samples. That way I can refer back to something I've done myself which always helps the learning process. After reading Deb's book and taking a dyeing workshop with Sara Lamb I came home and started my own samples to help me understand a little better.

This time I wanted to take two sets of 5 colors, each set would blend well together and one color from each set would blend with one from the other set. (Keeping up here? It's so hard to type out your thought process. Or maybe that's just me!) The magic will happen when the experimental blending starts. So here are the dye results.









For those of you who like to start with something concrete and then add your own touch, I've included my formulas. The color key is below.



















51234

MU10


Y10


 



WFR


100



MU20


S10


Y60


WFR10



M20


S10


MU30


Y20


WFR20



MU80


Y20





















12345

Y80


T20


 



V50


B30


T20



MU20


V5


B65


T10



M30


V10


B50


Y10



MU50


V10


B30


T10





MU=mustard
Y=yellow
S=scarlet
M=magenta
b=bright blue
t=turquoise
v=violet
These are Sabraset dyes from ProChem. I also used red from the Washfast line (WFR=Washfast red). My basic palette comes from Sara's handouts and Deb's book.

7 comments:

  1. Those are great pictures/labels. They really help show how you did what you did! Did you decide to stick with the hat concept?

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  2. fanfuntastic, and so well explained :)
    The finished knitting/spinning will be fun to see too (no pressure!).

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  3. Great colors! The flame colorway makes me want to leap in the air and shout!
    Did you use a ruler to apply the dyes? On the knit blanks, it looks super-straight in the pre-steam photo, but it looks wavy in the post-steam photo. Or is it my eyes? Also, what is the purpose of leaving the white lines?

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  4. Very cool idea! I was wondering what was going to happen to those knitted mini-blankets! I just love learning new techniques and having new ideas presented to me! Thanks so much for sharing.

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  5. I can't wait to see how the dyed blanks look when you unravel them. I'm in awe of your motivation.

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  6. Wow...this looks interesting and fun!

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  7. Charlene you are amazing...Fantastic colours. FYI...I have a new blog home; note your url field :-)

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