Received a Knit Picks shipment — more Babette yarn, will it ever end? The Swish Superwash Chili Pepper red is perfect, not to bright, but still intense. Then there was Coast Gray, and the Bare Superwash. I started out with the Bare, shooting for lime green/chartreuse with a mixture of Wilton’s icing dyes in Leaf Green and Sunny Yellow. This was my first time with Wilton’s and, er, I had a bit of a mishap…
I noticed right away that the Sunny Yellow gel looked orange. Paying it no mind, I mixed a bit into a heavy solution of Leaf Green. Then, trying to save time, I put the yarn (pre-soaked in hot water and vinegar) into a pyrex baking dish intended for the microwave. Took the green solution and started pouring.
Uh-oh! The solution was waaay too dark, and quickly got soaked up instead of diffusing. And it was an ugly brownish green. When you mix a secondary color (in this case, green) with the opposite primary (in this case the red in the yellow cake dye), you get brown. Hastily threw the yarn into warm soapy water and washed it out, but the large dirty brown patches remained. I re-dyed it on the stovetop with just the green. It needs more yellow and I’m unhappy with the muddy green parts, but I don’t want to abuse the yarn further. Lesson: do a small test run first! The hard part with Wilton’s is that there’s not really a good way to control the amount of pigment, given the gloppy consistency of the gel.
Had better luck with the overdye project with Coast Gray Swish Superwash. Goal: very dark plum. First try was with Grape Kool-Aid. It needed more pigment and I added a bit of Cherry, but that tilted too much towards red. A final dunk in a solution of Wilton’s Violet did the trick. In real life the yarn is a very dark purple; my camera tends to minimize red and shift towards blue.
Still on the agenda for Babette yarns: overdye some Woolease to get tan, lilac, and periwinkle. I have a pretty good handle on ovedyeing Woolease, so hopefully it will go more smoothly.
I’m preparing to start dyeing yarn, too. Are there any issues dyeing wool-ease since it’s 25% acrylic? I was wondering about wool blends. Thanks for sharing!
Your yarn turned out great! I had the same problem with the cake dyes — thought that they’d be so fun to try but wound up with the same color green next to a brick red (it was supposed to be green next to pink…) When I spun it up, it came out brown (colors were opposite enough on the wheel, I guess…) Had to overdye it with Koolaid as well…
The purple looks like it’ll be fun to work with!
T. — The trick with overdyeing Woolease is to enrich the color (use an analogous color, i.e., stay on the same side of the color wheel) and not stray too far from the original value (lightness/darkness and saturation). Otherwise you wind up with weird spotty looking yarn instead of an interesting heather. The other trick is to prevent the acrylic from scorching. I find it best to bring the water up to a low boil, shut the heat off, and let it sit uncovered a minute or two. Then I stir in the dye, put in the yarn, and and let it sit with the lid on for about 15 minutes, gently stirring occasionally.
Geckogrrl — Thanks! I wish I could dye exclusively with Kool Aid, it’s so much easier, but they only carry purple, a few reds, and pale yellow and orange around here. I can’t find lemon lime (lime green), mandarin orange, or the blue color. That’s why I tried Wilton’s, but I’m finding it so much tricker to use. I might invest a little more and get powder food coloring.