Friday, February 29, 2008

The Color Purple

and blue. and green. I've been dying up a storm these days, pots of dye and drying fiber everywhere. I divided up a pound of merino roving and experimented with it, using both kool-aid and acid dyes. I had never worked with straight roving before, but it was pretty straight forward.
These are the blue raspberry and ice blue baths. I also did a lemon-lime, which produced a green roving. Here they are after drying.
Then I moved on to purple. Ah, purple. I was never able to get a non-muddy color with Kool-aid, so I bought some Knit Picks acid dye. I bought both purple and lilac, and came to the conclusion I liked the lilac much better. I didn't take any shots of the lilac roving, which turned out very rich looking, but here's some sock yarn in the making. This and this turned into this:
I'm going to give the skein (lilac and natural) away in a swap, and I'm going to use the wound ball (purple, lilac and natural) to make Rosa's socks. from Interweave Knits.
I also dyed some fingering weight merino (light lilac) to make something like this, which I freaking LOVE!

8 comments:

Jenny said...

Wow! I'm trying to figure out how you folded up the yarn to get the purple and white to end up in the right places. Looks like you had a good time.

Julie said...

Very nice dyeing results! Someday I'll get brave & try it. Just found some knit picks bare fingering weight I'd forgotten.

Vera said...

Beautiful yarn! You should make some orange and white too.

Anonymous said...

Pretty! Are you going to bring it Saturday so we can all see it in person?
Hazel

Beverly said...

Does the roving and yarn smell like Kool-Aid? I've only used acid dyes.

shansays said...

You may know already know this, but it's worth a reminder. Easter Egg dye is fabulous for fiber, and you can get it cheap the day after Easter.

weebug said...

wow, that purple is awesome!

Theresa said...

I haven't tried KP dyes but may now after seeing this. I love the purple and think your socks will look neat.

Catching Up

First things first - you might have noticed I've changed the name of the blog. Knitting NonPareil was appropriate at one time, but I don...