Fiber: Cherie Amour dye attempts #1 and #2

Here's what I'm starting with -- undyed wool, and Jacquard acid dyes in Emerald and Black. My goal is to achieve a soft sage green, something akin to the Leaf colorway here.

Acid dyes aren't really acid -- the acid in question is actually vinegar, which you add to the dye bath to set the color. However, they come in powder format, and you do need to be careful handling the powder, especially if you have, say, a history of landing in the hospital for breathing problems. Plus, it's hard to measure out powder like that, or to combine two different powders without getting them all over your kitchen. So the first thing I did was to CAREFULLY combine some powder with water to make a 1% dye solution (1 gram dye to 100 grams water). This is basically like a big jar of food coloring, easy to measure and mix with other colors.

The amount of dye you need is determined by the weight of the yarn you're dyeing, and this is where ugly math starts. You should use 2% to 4% of the fabric weight in dye -- if you're dyeing 100 grams of yarn, you should use 2 to 4 grams of dry powder. That's fine, but what if you're only dyeing two or three grams of yarn?

That's where the beauty of the 1% dye solution comes in. My first test batch was only about 2 grams of yarn, so 2% to 4% is 0.04g to 0.08g of dye powder. I don't have a kitchen scale that measures in those kinds of units, but if you remember, we've got our giant jars of liquid dye, and we can work backwards from there. I put in 1 gram of dye and 100 grams of water. So, if I want 0.04g of dye, I can just take 4 grams of dye solution (0.04 g * 100 g h2o / 1 g dye), and thanks to the magic of math, I have the correct amount of dye.

Batch A

I prepped the yarn for dyeing, and then stood around doing the math to get the right amount of dye. Since I wanted a relatively soft color, I decided to only use 2% of the fabric weight in dye, or 4 grams of my dye solution. The Emerald dye color is a fairly bright green, and to get the sage color I was after, I toned it down by using a 3:1 green:black ratio, 3 grams green solution and 1 gram black.

I prepped the dye bath as per the instructions, added my yarn, and put it on the stovetop to boil. I used a very tiny amount of vinegar to set the dye, based on the manufacturer's recommendations of 1/4 c vinegar per pound of fabric. The math on that is painful, and I eventually wound up putting the vinegar in solution as well, to get a total vinegar amount of 0.25g (basically, a few drops -- a quarter of a 1/4 tsp).



The result is the bottom yarn. It's definitely soft -- too soft, in fact, and with not quite enough green in it. It's a nice celery color, but I don't want a whole sweater in that color. So, back to the drawing board.

Batch B

This time, I cut off 5g of yarn, to make my math a little nicer. To deepen the color, I decided to step up to using 3% of the yarn weight, 0.15g dry powder, 15g of my dye solution. I changed the green-to-black ratio to 4:1 green:black, or 12g green solution and 3g black solution, so that it would be more green and not as gray. I also decided to just pour in a glug of vinegar, thinking that perhaps I didn't have enough vinegar in the previous batch to help the dye penetrate the fiber.

As you can see from the photo above, those things made a BIG difference. Batch B is much, much more saturated, and the green is deeper. I think it's mostly due to the extra vinegar -- even the first batch had a lot of dye in it, more than enough to really darken the yarn.

I think that this color is very nice indeed. It's darker than what I'd intended, but it would be quite flattering to me. You can't see it in the photo, but there are subtle variations in the color, and it gives the yarn a lot of depth. I'm going to turn it into a small swatch to see how I like it knitted up.

I am debating whether to make a third batch and see if I can hit on the sage green I originally wanted, to compare it with the olive Batch B. I'm thinking of using 2% of the yarn weight in dye again, and adding about a teaspoon of vinegar, rather than the coupla-tablespoons from Batch B.

I'm still a little nervous about dyeing the whole pile o' yarn, but these two test batches are encouraging.

Fiber-bloggery

Because I don't have a knitting blog, and because I am too lazy to think of a good title for one, I'm going to talk about fiber stuff here for a bit. Now that I'm on Ravelry, I'm wanting to do some more detailed journaling. BTW, if you have gotten hooked on the Ravelry smack, email me at fertilityproject@gmail.com for my Ravelry handle, and I'll friend you -- I love having friends!

I've been knitting for, oh, a year and a half now, and crocheting for a bit longer than that. In that time, I've made baby hats and adult hats, blankets and toys, scarves, booties, baby dresses, and several pairs of socks. However, I've never yet knit myself a sweater. This is mainly because my weight has fluctuated so wildly in that time, with the infertility gain and the pregnancy and the massive postpartum weight loss. I haven't been the same weight from one fall to the next in literally six years, and I haven't wanted to sink the time or the yarn cost into a sweater I'll only wear one season.

However, I've stabilized recently, and while I'd still like to lose a few more pounds, I'm not really working hard to do it, and it won't really be enough to affect my upper body size too much. So, I finally decided it's Sweater Time, and Cherie Amour from the latest Knitty stood up and yelled, "knit me!"

I have heard from several people, including Jo, that the yarn called for in the pattern is perfectly delicious. Sadly, I couldn't find a colorway I liked. As a general rule, I don't much like highly variegated yarns, especially on large garments. See how, in the pictures in the pattern, the yarn goes all stripey at the waist, and then there are large chunks of the various colors in the lacey part? That's called pooling.

Variegated yarns are notorious for doing this, and while I'm kind of OK with it in the context of a sock or a scarf, it's just not my thing for a sweater. It plays funny tricks on the eye, which in turn can be less-than-flattering on the body, and obscures the prettiness of a lace pattern. So I knew I'd have to go for a solid-colored yarn or a semi-solid, with very subtle color variations.

Unfortunately, we are currently and temporarily local-yarn-store-less here in my city, until it reopens under new management sometime this fall. I shopped around on the Internets a bit, ordered a test skein, knit a swatch, hated my swatch, and then knit another swatch with some of the bulky-weight wool that's destined for the girls' Christmas stockings. (Which I now estimate will be completed for next Christmas, or possibly five Christmases from now, based on my complete and total failure to actually put yarn to needles for them.) This yarn worked -- gauge was right, and I liked the fabric I got -- but unfortunately, none of the available colors really floated my boat.

This is the part where I decided to get brilliant. See, you don't HAVE to confine yourself to the pre-dyed colors they offer for sale. If you like, you can buy the undyed version of the same yarn, and dye it your very own self. I promptly ordered a bunch of skeins, and some green and black acid dyes, and started plotting how I'd go about creating a nice weathered-looking sage green. Never mind that I'd not once so much as tie-dyed a shirt at summer camp. No, I was going to figure out how to dye, and make myself the One True Perfect Sweater Yarn.

At this point, if you are wondering whether it is a good idea to do a sweater's worth of yarn as your very first dyeing project, the answer is no. Happily, I came to that conclusion as well, and for once I didn't have to figure it out the hard way first. I've dyed two small test batches, just a few yards cut off a single hank, and I feel like I'm actually getting close to ready to do the big scary dye of all yarn. I just need to acquire a few more supplies at Wal-Mart, and figure out where and how I'm going to set up six skeins of wet not-necessarily-colorfast wool yarn to dry.

I now see how people get addicted to dyeing yarn. Believe it or not, there's a whole cottage industry centered around hand-painting and hand-dyeing yarn, mostly sock yarn, and now I know why it exists. I'm very much a product knitter -- I knit because I want to make the things I see in my head -- and if I start dyeing my own yarn, I can get EXACTLY what I want. I have a mile-wide streak of do-it-yourselfism, and the idea of dyeing my own yarn is tremendously appealing.

The idea of spinning my own yarn before dyeing it is also appealing, but really, don't I have enough on my plate?