Dye Day November 2008

So, I have now tried dyeing roving.

Some of my Wed. night knitting friends had the idea to have a “Dye Day” where we could all get together and dye yarn and/or roving. This was a great idea, and lots of fun. We were able to share ideas, help each other, and learn from watching what others did.

Most of my friends used Kool Aid to dye yarn, or Easter Egg dyes, or food coloring. I brought Jacquard acid dyes and used them to dye some corriedale cross roving.

So here is my roving before I dyed it, soaking in a pot of water (a necessary pre-dyeing step):

And here is the end result, photo taken on Tuesday Nov. 25th (yarn was dyed on Sat. Nov. 22nd, and rinsed on Sun. Nov. 23rd, and finished drying on Mon. Nov. 24th):

Here’s a description of the process and more pics…

I used the book The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook as my guide. They describe two basic methods which they refer to as Hot Pour and Cold Pour respectively. For this time dyeing, I decided to try the cold pour method. In this method you spread out saran wrap over something protective like newspaper and a drop cloth. Here you see how easy it is to spread the saran wrap out:

 

Then you lay out your roving on top of the saran wrap. The book suggested breaking it off into 1-yard lengths, but I didn’t want to. So I left it as one long 8-oz piece of roving. Now squirt the roving with your dyes (you need to have mixed them ahead of time), and then spray with vinegar.

 

After applying the dye and vinegar, wrap it up securely sealed in the saran wrap (a bit loose to allow for expansion, but no air leaks). Then put it in a pot and steam it for about 20 minutes. It really helps if you don’t forget the spray with vinegar BEFORE you wrap it up and put it in the pot. I forgot that part.

Soooo… after it had been steaming for about 10 minutes, I remembered that I had not sprayed with vinegar. Ack!!! So I took it out of the pot, unwrapped it, sprayed with vinegar, and then re-wrapped, put it back in the pot and steamed for another 20 plus minutes. I had put some vinegar into the dye solution (this was something I did because of stuff I read on the web, but wasn’t suggested in the Twisted Sisters book). But I was afraid that the vinegar I put into the solution might not be enough vinegar to set the dye, therefore I wanted to go ahead and do the spraying.

Well, it turns out now that the dyeing is done, that my roving is a bit felted/matted/compacted on the surface. Not bad, but it’s definitely not “soft and fluffy.” I’m thinking that handling the hot wool, after it had been steaming for 10 minutes already, may have contributed to a somewhat felted/matted/compacted surface on my roving, although I handled it as carefully as I possibly could. I can’t think of anything else I did that might have caused felting/compacting. So I’m attributing it for now to the error in forgetting the vinegar and then having to do extra handling with hot, wet, wool.

I mixed the colors the day before, per the instructions in the Twisted Sisters book, but only made 1/2 quart of each of my 5 colors, instead of the quart suggested in the book. I put in 1 tsp of color to a bit less than 2 cups of water, and also added a tablespoon or two of vinegar. The basic method is to combine 1 tsp of the dye power with about a half tbsp of very hot or boiling water, and paste it up with a rubber spatula, and after you’ve dissolved the granules of dye, then add the rest of the very hot/boiling water. But some of the colors didn’t dissolve easily, especially the yellow and green, and so I added a couple tsp or more of alcohol as a “wetting” agent, which seemed to help. However, after the yellow cooled the dye particles precipitated out again. I did not use the yellow in this dye day, but when I do use it, I will have to heat it up again to try and re-dissolve the dye particles. Note: Per the Twisted Sisters book, I doubled the amount of yellow dye in the solution: 2 tsp yellow dye to 2 cups water.

It did take me about an hour to mix up the 5 dyes the day before, because my house just isn’t logistically set up in a convenient way to do this. I kept making trips in and out between the garage and kitchen, because I really wanted to do the mixing in the garage, but I needed the sink or tea kettle in the kitchen at times. It was a kind of pain in the rear. My friends who used Kool Aid seemed to have a much easier time of it, without having to worry about the safety factor and so on. It went pretty quickly for them.

When we all gathered for Dye Day, my friend Lorinda was going to use some of my Jacquard acid dyes. And she noted that the base mixtures of the Sky Blue and Kelly Green were very dark, and not much lighter at all than the Navy and Violet. She suggested diluting them, which I did, to about half strength. That turns out in hindsight to have been an excellent suggestion, as you can see that even at half strength the Sky Blue and Kelly Green came out rather intense… see pictures below…

After the 20 minutes of steaming I removed the pot from the flame and then let it cool a bit before driving it home still in the pot. I let it sit and cool overnight, as the Twisted Sisters book says that can make for very intense colors, and I sure did get that.

So the following morning I removed the roving from the Saran Wrap and rinsed it in my sink. The Saran Wrap did have some extra dye on the outside of it, or in between the layers. It was a bit messy.

Then I put some old towels over an upside down laundry basket out in my garage, and draped the roving there to dry for a good day, plus.

Here’s the end result again:

I will say that working with the Saran Wrap, and having to wrap the roving up and then later remove it, is kind of a bother, too. It can be messy and difficult. I think next time I will try the hot pour method, which uses no Saran Wrap. Instead you put the fiber in a pot of vinegar water that you slowly heat up and then pour the dyes onto the fiber. Maybe I will try that within the next few weeks, as I still have additional roving to dye, and mixed dyes to use up.

It will be interesting to spin this up. I’m sure that I can fluff the roving up so that it will spin nicely. I have no idea what I’m going to make from this. I guess I’ll spin it, see how it comes out, and then decide.

A word about safety with acid dyes…

While acid dyes (such as Jacquard, Sabraset, Lanacet, etc.) are in powder form, one should wear a dust mask and take great care to avoid getting the powders on things. Inhaling the dust can be very bad for your lungs. I mixed my dyes in a box lined with damp newspaper outside in the garage, and then threw the newspaper away when I was done. Any spills need to be cleaned up immediately, and either wiped or thoroughly flushed with water, as leaving them and allowing them to dry introduces the risk that later the dried dye powder could be disturbed and go back into fine particulate in the air. Any pots, utensils, etc. used with the liquid (or powder) dye, should be considered dedicated to dyeing only, and should not be used for food preparation or consumption thereafter.

The above is not a complete list of precautions that should be taken with these dyes, and you should do additional research of your own, or contact the vendor for further instructions.