6.03.2011

Day 3- Dyeing

Today's project is not very exciting. About a year ago I was given a very large amount of rough yarn that I have been trying to work through. Really this yarn is best suited for rug type projects, but I don't knit rugs so I have been trying to incorporate it into other non-wearable projects.

Here's the yarn, sorry about the picture quality, this shade of green is one of the colors that digital cameras have trouble with so just imagine a mix of bright spring greens with small sections of cooler greens.


For this yarn, I decided to try out my organic-certified dyes and since they dyes were a little more eco-friendly than what I normally use, I also decided to use rain barrel water for the rinse and the dyebath. This is my first summer with rain barrels and I am slightly obsessed with finding as many ways to use the water as possible and since this yarn is to be used for an outdoor project I wasn't too worried about the possibility of a little debris in the dyebath. If I wanted to be really green I would have constructed a solar oven to set the dye instead of using my stove, but I am not quite there, yet. All-in-all everything worked out, but I did end up dyeing the yarn twice because the green dye came out way too blue for my taste. Usually I mix my own colors, but since the dye samples I had came with secondary colors I went ahead and used their green and ended up overdyeing with a yellow to give me more of the color I wanted. I don't want to base my review of these dyes on my experience with the green so I will do some mixing and experimenting with the primary colors and post a review at a later date.

Oh and if you are wondering about the project this yarn is destined for, you will just have to wait until next week when the secret is revealed, hopefully it will be worth the wait.

No comments: