Playing with colours.....

After the excitement of the weekend I couldn't resist having another dyeing session. I particularly wanted to try the black theory with the cool colours from the Saturday's list magenta, acid yellow and turquoise. I mixed up a black dye at 0.5% and the rest at 1% and although the outcome is nice enough it doesn't have the contrast I had hoped for.




I dyed up a further 4 100 gram rovings ( one merino and three falkland) - two using combinations of Navy, Raspberry, Grey and Turquoise and these I am very happy with


There are subtle differences between the two, with the Merino, at the top, having the turquoise. As the raspberry was producing some really good results I tried another but this time with just turquoise and left a lot of white - what this shows is that if you want white then you need to leave a lot of undyed roving.



And then finally just for the fun, I dyed the last roving in three shades of red, Cherry Red, Crimson and Scarlet


This was particularly hard to photograph and this pic doesn't do the colours justice there is a lot more variation in the reds going from a dark red down to a pale pink. I used the microwave to set the dye and the results are so much softer than when I steam set and even better with a fianl rinse of hair conditioner (thanks Shani)

Overall I am pleased with my afternoon, but I have to let you into a secret - not until I had finished did I realise that I had been using the wrong ratio of dye to fluid - I had used a liquid measurement for the dry dye stuff!!! When I tested this out with salt on the scales it seems that I was using just over half as much as I should have done. Not that this has spoiled the results, but it is something to remember for next time....