Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Breaking Wilton's Violet on a Twisted Hank of Yarn


I love breaking dyes.  In the past I've broken Wilton's Violet food coloring in many dyeing experiments and I've also broken Wilton's delphinium blue.  I thought it would be fun to try dyeing a whole twisted hank of yarn and see what kind of color breaking I could get.


If you look REALLY CLOSELY you can see that there is some color variation versus just tonal variation.  See the little spots of pink?


Obviously this didn't work out like I had intended, but that is why these are called Dyeing Experiments!  I often don't know how things will turn out.  Sometimes when I play with a new technique I get spectacular results and other times I'm a little underwhelmed.  Check out the new ChemKnits Tutorials Video to see what I did!  


Video Contents 

  • [0:00] Introduction and presoaking 
  • [2:29] Setting up the Dyebath 
  • [5:05] Adding the Yarn and turning up the heat. 
  • [6:30] Reducing Temperature 
  • [7:02] Checking in after another 10 minutes of simmering 
  • [8:13] Untwisting the yarn to wash it 
  • [9:55] The dry yarn and conclusions 


The colors broke... a little.  Maybe this would work better if I started with dry yarns instead of presoaking it.  Well, I have something to try out for another dyeing experiment!  At the very least I have a fun mottled purple and white yarn, even if it wasn't what I set out to create.