Dyeing For Lace
Feb. 16th, 2009 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liralenI don't usually dye lace yarn, as it muddies the patterns, but... I wanted to try a few new things yesterday.
Today was a really busy day. Heck, the last couple of days have been busy days, as Jet had the weekend off, including today for President's Day.
I managed to do all the fic stuff, and did some dyeing as well. I know that dyeing and knitting help me with my stress levels, and I've never done beaded lace before and I thought I'd try it. I also don't usually dye lace yarn as a lot of different colors can, sometimes, detract from the lace pattern itself.
Still... I also wanted to try a new technique that is actually pretty old, but new to me. It's called a hot-pour dye kettle. The basic idea is to heat up the yarn and water and some acid, and when it's all good and hot, pour on the dye. The actual technique is to do it in quadrants, but I didn't really want a one in four repeat, I wanted something less organized. The good thing is that with the hot pour is that the dye should strike as soon as it hits the yarn, so there wasn't going to be as much mixing and cloudiness as there would be if I'd started the dye bath cold and just mixed all the colors in the pot at once.
One also starts with the lightest colors and moves on to the darker ones, and one waits for the first to exhaust completely before going on to the next. This allows the yarn to saturate on the lightest colors, first, so that the later colors can't take over what's already been taken in the wool. I don't think I did quite a strong enough yellow, though, admittedly, I wanted it to not have that much yellow.
I really like the results, more than I thought I would when it was in the pot. The mottled colors are really nice and random and kind of that cloudy look that can't really be created any other way. I also found some perfect beads for them, pink with a purple metallic core that matches the resulting colors but also shines really nicely. It'll be kind of interesting to see what kind of pattern can stand up to that mottle.
With the sheer randomness of that particular dye technique, I had to do one that was very, very orderly as well, just to counteract my feeling of omg, I've just ruined the first skein!! Though I hadn't. *laughs*
I did a blue skein with four shades of blues, two of greens, one dark violet, and a strand or two of black, just to darken most of it up. I did it in my usual paint-on method and the results were quite nice, if I say so myself. It'll be interesting to see how it knits up in a lace field. I have very simple clear crystal beads for this one. It turned out a little darker than that second picture gives credit for, but... the bright green is still very bright. *grins*
We spent most of today on a field trip to the Denver Museum of Natural Science, as they had a special exhibit on Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Hurricanes. I think my favorite exhibit was one where they'd planted an eight-way camera with audio equipment in the middle of a road in Kansas and a tornado went right over it. That was amazing.
But I learned a lot more about tsunami, earthquakes, volcano construction and characteristics, and how a tornado or hurricane comes into being than I'd known before. I also collected even more Katrina facts than I had before, and even more haunting stories. I'm leaving for Biloxi again in two weeks, to go put more screws in dry board or help build homes back up again... so we're getting set to go away again.
Jet and I bought him a little solar-powered car for him to play with, and he loves it and is really, really happy with it. Especially in our solar climate, he's really jazzed by the little electrical motor that goes Whirrrrrrr in the least bit of bright sun. He should enjoy that while I'm gone.
I've also picked up a cold. I should probably sleep... *laughs quietly*
Today was a really busy day. Heck, the last couple of days have been busy days, as Jet had the weekend off, including today for President's Day.
I managed to do all the fic stuff, and did some dyeing as well. I know that dyeing and knitting help me with my stress levels, and I've never done beaded lace before and I thought I'd try it. I also don't usually dye lace yarn as a lot of different colors can, sometimes, detract from the lace pattern itself.
Still... I also wanted to try a new technique that is actually pretty old, but new to me. It's called a hot-pour dye kettle. The basic idea is to heat up the yarn and water and some acid, and when it's all good and hot, pour on the dye. The actual technique is to do it in quadrants, but I didn't really want a one in four repeat, I wanted something less organized. The good thing is that with the hot pour is that the dye should strike as soon as it hits the yarn, so there wasn't going to be as much mixing and cloudiness as there would be if I'd started the dye bath cold and just mixed all the colors in the pot at once.
One also starts with the lightest colors and moves on to the darker ones, and one waits for the first to exhaust completely before going on to the next. This allows the yarn to saturate on the lightest colors, first, so that the later colors can't take over what's already been taken in the wool. I don't think I did quite a strong enough yellow, though, admittedly, I wanted it to not have that much yellow.
I really like the results, more than I thought I would when it was in the pot. The mottled colors are really nice and random and kind of that cloudy look that can't really be created any other way. I also found some perfect beads for them, pink with a purple metallic core that matches the resulting colors but also shines really nicely. It'll be kind of interesting to see what kind of pattern can stand up to that mottle.
With the sheer randomness of that particular dye technique, I had to do one that was very, very orderly as well, just to counteract my feeling of omg, I've just ruined the first skein!! Though I hadn't. *laughs*
I did a blue skein with four shades of blues, two of greens, one dark violet, and a strand or two of black, just to darken most of it up. I did it in my usual paint-on method and the results were quite nice, if I say so myself. It'll be interesting to see how it knits up in a lace field. I have very simple clear crystal beads for this one. It turned out a little darker than that second picture gives credit for, but... the bright green is still very bright. *grins*
We spent most of today on a field trip to the Denver Museum of Natural Science, as they had a special exhibit on Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Hurricanes. I think my favorite exhibit was one where they'd planted an eight-way camera with audio equipment in the middle of a road in Kansas and a tornado went right over it. That was amazing.
But I learned a lot more about tsunami, earthquakes, volcano construction and characteristics, and how a tornado or hurricane comes into being than I'd known before. I also collected even more Katrina facts than I had before, and even more haunting stories. I'm leaving for Biloxi again in two weeks, to go put more screws in dry board or help build homes back up again... so we're getting set to go away again.
Jet and I bought him a little solar-powered car for him to play with, and he loves it and is really, really happy with it. Especially in our solar climate, he's really jazzed by the little electrical motor that goes Whirrrrrrr in the least bit of bright sun. He should enjoy that while I'm gone.
I've also picked up a cold. I should probably sleep... *laughs quietly*
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