Jaquard & Yarns Of Italy brown final results.

I was so excited to get to the final results I woke up early just to check on it and here it is! I LOVE this color.

Yarns of Italy and Jacquard Dyes

This time I wanted to do a brown.  But I was unsure how it would be so I decided to make a small dyebath.  I tried my new yarn from Yarns of Italy 

This is there 100% Merino wool DK yum! super soft and definitely meets my high expectations.

 As always I have to soak it in a acid water solution.

While that soaks I make the bath and add the dye.  I added 1/8 teaspoon of Jacquard dyes because I like my dyes to be slightly under-saturated and uneven.

Oh that looks like... smoke, but its not just part of the process.  I think I can see some nicely uneven brown in there!

OHHHH!!! that looks good!!

Oh thats stunning! WOW!! I love it! I love it so much I might l just start selling this dyed and not work it into ties.  I dont know I feel like the market for dyed yarns is so packed.

Anyway this is the last image of it till it dries,  I love the lights and darks.  The yarn is in the bath room drying and once it is dry i will update you.

The final results with Jacquard Yellow Sun

Today I have more final results from another dye job.

This color is the result of two blues and a yellow.  the blues were done first and then I over dyed them with Jacquard Yellow Sun.  I didn't really turn out as I expected, I wanted more yellow and less green.  but it cant be out done.  I did learn that even though when I added Yellow Sun to the dye bath, it appeared like there was not much yellow in the bath and it was too pale.  So like a fool I added another 1/2 teaspoon of yellow!  BAD IDEA!! The end result had much more green than intended and it was a more vibrant than I hand intended.

Sure enough once I wound the ball up it was indeed much more green than blue or yellow.  Still it was an important lesson learned.  I decided to continue to work the tie as intended even if the colors where not what I thought they would be. 

Hand Dyed Silk Merino The end results!

So the point of all this is to offer my customers something they can get nowhere else!  So after all the dyeing I had to redesign the ties to show of the full variety of color!  To the right is the first silk merino skein I dyed, it shows to full range of yellows, pinks, salmon and red.  All of it very complementary without any color dominating or being out of place.

Dyeing with Jacquard Dyes

So after reading a lot and watching many videos on yarn dyeing I was ready to give it a try.

This is a great video.  but one thing I really didn't know is that powder dyes like Jacquard are very concentratraed. 

My first skien was suppost to be red and purple, but i used one and 1/4th teaspoons of dye which turned out to be way to much for 3.5 oz yarn skein and the result was a big black mess.

So with that lesson, I went and tried to dye another skein this time with only 1/2 teaspoon of dye which still turned out ot be a bit much.  I was aiming for a black and gold.

Oh that looks awful...  but there is still dye in the pot so i let it heat set and finish up.

That looks a bit better but still awful.

FINISHED.  Top the black and gold skein.  Bottom: blue and yellow.  

Ok so the black and gold is kind of ugly but I like it.  Both will be used for making ties.

Space Dyeing w Food Coloring Merino/Silk with yellow/orange/red food coloring.

Good evening,  one of the most fun things to do is to space dye yarn. 

(Space dyed) sections of the yarn are dyed in different colors resulting in a fabric with a multi-color effect

So again I turned to Rebecca from ChemKnits. I started with a goal, a golden orange yarn with flecks of red and yellow.  First thing is I followed the directions for the first dye style we saw earlier using my two base colors this makes the orange.

I knew I was not using enough to get exactly what I want.  thats ok.  Using two of the bowls shown i mixed two more dye baths, one that is most yellow and one that is mostly red. To keep track you have three different dye mixes going on. You have the light orange that is heating in the pot, one small bowl with most red, and one with mostly yellow.  Now we prep the yarn for regular dyeing.  Its not a lot of color in the pot so it doesnt take long for the yarn to absorb all the orange dye. Now for back to Rebecca from Chem Knits:

Using the space dying you will pour some mostly red and some mostly yellow in the way she showed here.  now my pot looks like this:

The flash hides the variables but you will see that the top of picture looks more yellow and the bottom looks more red! Good!
Now we finish up, and look at this:

I wound it up into a ball. 

This is going to make some AMAZING ties.  I cant wait!

I want to try this Jacquard dyes but i dont know if the affect will be the same.  Anyway enjoy!