Dye Session 03: Blues

So, I decided that the green went so well, that i'd try making blue.

Well the first batch I did some bright blue with a smidge of black. Just a little bit of both because I wanted a nice soft blueish grey looking color.

After 30 minutes the water was almost clear and WHITE SPOTS GALORE! /me sheds tears

So, I did what I did with the green... rotated all the ties (burning my hands in the process), lifted the yarn, added only a bit of blue (powder directly to crockpot), some vinegar, let the dripping mix...

realized that the blue was not mixing well...so I used my chop stick (burning my hand some more) to mix it...when it was all just water and no powder clumps, I put the yarn back in.

30 minutes later the blue was taking, but STILL WHITE SPOTS
so this time i fliped the yarn inside out (so, if you held the yarn by one looped end, the parts that were touching now became the parts that were not touching...) hoping this would even out the color some.

put the yarn back in the water... cry over my burned hands (damn those crockpots get water hot)
30 mintues later, moved the top of the yarn to the bottom
30 minutes later, STILL WHITE SPOTS so I swished the yarn around to mix things up a bit... i really DO NOT want to add any more color (i wanted light blue...but now it's at a blue i'm comfortable with so I don't want to mess with it)

then remembered that the magenta + blue = purple skien was actually boiling...so i resolved to just let it sit for 60 minutes...in 30 i'll just probably look into the glass and see if i see bubbles along the edges...

but... if worse comes to worse, i can just dye it again tomorrow... with a darker blue and just cry...

but we'll see...maybe i'll be pleased with the results later.

---update 01---

okay so i went to look 60 mintues later and i CAN NOT understand why nothing is taking to the light blue/white-ish spots.

so, yes, i went to the dark blue and added a smidge to the water... now it's dark blue, blue grey, and white...

EHHHHHHHHH

waiting 30 minutes before i burn the whole thing.

---update 02---
well i gave up. did the "white spoon test" and the water was crystal clear. so i unplugged the sucker, cracked the lid... and decided to take some picutres.

it was very hard to catch the tones of the blues, so i'm putting up two pictures to show the depth. first up is the "light blues" ... which, in my opinion, right now...dominate the yarn


and here we have the "dark blues"


i'll post pics of it while hanging to dry and then pictures again once dry.

---update 03---
woke up this morning and rinsed... SURPRISINGLY the water was clear on first rinse. but since i used eucalan and there were suds everywhere, i rinsed a second time for good measure.

after rolling it (with a rolling pin) in a towel to get out the excess water, it was pretty close to dry. hopefully this means that it will be dry sometime tonight??? oh and this time i took out the ties while drying (b/c it makes dents if you don't).

so here we are hanging on the drying rack.


because it's so early in the morning, i went ahead and took pictures of my dry and ready to use new yarns.
this is the magenta which i redyed in blue...and it came out a raspberry color with blue highlights. so here's it in the skien ready to "go"


and here it is undone so you can see the color changes


now i'm beginning to realize that yellow is a very hard color to capture. this picture looks like the yarn is all one subtle (very) solid...but it's not... it's got yellow tones in it.

i actually went outside with a white towel and turned my flash off, used micro, and did a fast shutter speed in hopes to get true color...but damn is anything yellow hard...


my feeble attempt to show the color changes... i promise you, it's gorgeous.