Purple is the new gray
Today Kindel and I indulged in some Kool-Ade dyeing. The plan was to get a nice purple so I can make myself a new wrap. I bought 3 skeins of Knit Picks Bare Superwash Merino DK, and 12 packets of grape Kool-Ade. Straight grape produced a beautiful purple, but when Kindel and I started dyeing, we can’t stop with one color. I created a buffet of colors, starting with a violet made from Wiltons. Some of this was mixed 50:50 with grape. Then I made some Black Cherry, and mixed this with grape, first in a 50:50 ratio, then a 25:75 ratio. This last was the winner, and we accented the grape yarn with touches of this color. Finally, some straight Black Cherry in the crockpot, and quick pass through for each skein, and the color was done (center):
Now, we had several cups of assorted color blends, so naturally we looked for something else to dye. Enter my leftover charcoal gray Jaggerspun wool. I wasn’t particularly fond of the blue-gray color, but I had never gotten around to doing anything about it. Until now. We mixed a batch of Black Cherry, and colored the yarn as much as possible with this. Then we took the remaining blends, and went Mad Scientist on the yarn. Not sure of the outcome until after rinsing, we were thrilled with this deep heathered purple (bottom of picture):
Finally, left with still more unused color (and deploring the thought of dumping at all down the drain), I scrounged around and found a skein of orange Patons classic wool. We dumped the remaining colors all together in a pot, added the yarn, and (while not purple) now we have this superb color – what is it? Orange-Cranberry?
Whatever color this is, I love it! I’m so excited to crochet or knit all of these into special garments or accessories. The purple superwash is destined to be a wrap, the gray-purple will hopefully be enough for a dragonfly shawl, and the mystery color, well, with one skein, it maybe a purse or a felted hat. We’ll see. The color makes we so happy, it may have to be a kitchen doily or something.
January 2, 2010
Posted in: Knit and crochet
3 Responses
Gorgeous colors! Where did you get your instructions for the dyeing?
My friend Inga helped me get started last year, and now it’s pretty much Mad Scientist experimentation. There are a couple good dyeing groups on Ravelry, too.
Yeah! I always have sooo much fun when we dye yarn. I’m now itching to get back to it!
Leave a Reply