IRIDESCENCE?

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I have now dyed two of the three skeins.  One is dry.  One is dyed, rinsed, and hanging to dry.  And the third is for Tuesday.

The one that is dry is very interesting.  I dyed it using 65% yellow green and 35% red violet. In some lights the dyed yarn looks a deep khaki green.  In other lights it looks reddish brown. I have taken two photos showing the yarn’s appearance in different light, one is incandescent;  the other is florescent.   The yarn, by the way, is much more evenly dyed than the photos would suggest.

When the yarn was in the dyepot, the water actually looked red. So red that I wondered if the yarn was going to turn out red. 

Even the camera lens seems to want to separate out these colors.  I wonder if the shine of the silk isn’t contributing to this iridescence.

My guess is that when this warp yarn is crossed by yellow-green weft, the warp will look brown.  But when it is crossed by red-violet weft, the warp will look green.

The evenness of the dyeing pleased me.  Normally when I dye yarn, especially such large skeins of yarn, I shift the yarn around on the loops holding the yarn from the rod.  But I had read doing that this is a no-no.  Only lift the yarn in and out of the water.  That is what I did with this skein. 

"Iridescence?” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on November 6, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.