First Dye Samples: Results

Amount woven yesterday: 1.0" (well, 1 inch is better than no inches............)
Amount woven to date: 2 yards + 24.5"

Here are the pictures of the dyed yarn on my drying rack. It's in the bathroom and the lighting is florescent so the colors don't show right. On the left are the original colors I mixed. They are really a bit more intense than the picture shows. On the right are the yarns I dyed with 50% of one color and 50% of another color. You can't tell anything about these from the picture. One thing that is clear are the tags that I attached to that particular group of skeins. Because I knew the colors would be fairly close, I labeled them so that I could identify them.



These, however, are in incandescent light and the colors show a little bettr. On the top are the original colors. On the bottom are the mixed colors. You can tell even from this picture how much actual color the neutrals have, how far from neutral they really are.


Here is a picture just of the 50%/50% colors, my first experiment in creating neutrals. The picture was taken in incandescent light so the colors show better. You can tell even from this picture how much actual color the neutrals have, how far from neutral they really are.




So dyeing with opposite colors, or with near opposites, in a 50%/50% ration doesn't always work. For one thing, yellow is a very weak color, so if one of the colors is a yellow, or uses a lot of yellow, then, to get a visual 50/50 you really need to use more of the yellow and less of the other color. How much difference depends on the other color. If it is red or has red in it, much less of the red is needed than the yellow because red is very very strong.

Also clear is that the neutrals are in the area of grays, not the brown area. Since I want some neutrals that verge on golden, I am going to do some things with yellow as well.

Normally I dye at 4% DOS (depth of shade). This yields very intense colors, but also can waste dye if not all of it gets absorbed into the yarn. These I dyed at 2% DOS. I am going to repeat this sampling with 4% DOS for the colors are just not intense enough for me.

In any case, I am not only going to redye at 4% DOS, I am also going to approach the combining differently. And, as I said, I am going to add yellow into the mix. I shall continue to post results as I go.