Temperature Blanket, Swatching

 Of course I decided to go with a rainbow.  But not really.  A trip around the color wheel gets me six colors while a rainbow is seven.  

If you ever had an art class in elementary school you are familiar with the color wheel. Three primary colors in various combinations make up all the colors.  For most of us that is Red, Yellow, and Blue.  In print it is Magenta, Yellow and Cyan.  I laid out my dye swatches into reds, blues, and yellows to make my choices.

All the swatches. Yes, there are a lot of reds.  Reds are tough, in my opinion, because "true" red is so subjective. 

Dharma Chinese Red,  Dharma Indigo ( the color, not the plant based dye) and Dharma Brilliant Yellow. To my eye, these are the classic red, blue, and yellow.

Dharma Deep Magenta,  Jaquard Turquoise, and Dharma Brilliant yellow. The turquoise reads Cyan to me.

I tossed Jaquard Fire Red into the mix and set up my grid.  Setting up a grid helped meant I didn't have to label all the way along, and using a standard ratio of dye stock to one gram of yarn meant I didn't have to keep detailed notes on how much dye I used.  When I swatch dyes I always use 1ml of a 1% stock solution.  Thank you again Rebecca from Chemknits, the grid system and standardized stock solution I learned from you.

My final swatch grid.  Labeled now, because all these lovely swatches will eventually be tossed into a plastic bag for future reference.  There were some surprises.  The Dharma Indigo and Dharma Brilliant Yellow gave me a green that put me in mind of pine trees. Both the Jaquard Turquoise and the Dharma Deep Magenta maintained their brightness, especially together. 

I decided my primary colors would be the Dharma Indigo, the Dharma Brilliant Yellow,  and the Dharma Chinese Red.  The choice between the Chinese Red and the Jaquard Fire Red was the most difficult, I found them both appealing alone as well as the secondary colors they made. What helped make the final choice was the nearly empty 1/2 ounce jar of Jaquard versus the nearly full 2 ounce jar of Dharma.  That was also part of the decision making between my two yellows.

So there you go! I have my colors.  Next step: Dyeing the full skeins.

Thanks for reading, Blessed Be Y'all.

Outta the Dye Pot

 When I first started playing around with dyeing wool I was using food color.  I can't take credit for the idea.  One of my favorite YouTube rabbit hole finds is ChemKnits Tutorials.  Rebecca is bright and enthusiastic, and she comes from a science background.  She explains things and conducts experiments that I find very inspiring.  Not my point here, but that's the shoutout.

I noticed on the package of neon food color a "recipe" for an apricot color.  Neon green and Neon pink equal apricot.  Of course I tried it on wool.  It worked.  Most of my dyeing then was confined to fiber for spinning, and as a beginning spinner I was hesitant to shell out money for those gorgeous batts and braids and bumps.  White and natural get old fast.  I tossed some fiber into a pot, threw in some food color, and wound up with some fiber that was apricot, and some that was splotches of green and pink.  I spun the apricot, then the splotched stuff, and plied them together.  Apricot for Deconstruction was born.

A few months ago I decided to revisit my very first colorway, but instead of fiber I wanted a three skein set that could be used together.  Then I thought "Can I recreate this with acid dyes instead of food color?', and an experiment was born.

I used six quart mason jars to make this an easy side by side comparison.  Refilling and emptying a dye pot six times would be inefficient time wise, especially since I was only doing one skein of each color.

I used Dharma acid dyes in Radioactive and Fluorescent Pink side by side with McCormick Neon Pink and Neon Green.  The food color is the top row, acid dyes the bottom row.  I let them sit in water and dye for about 10 minutes before adding citric acid to each jar.  Then into the microwave.

Laid out in steam pans after microwaving each jar separately to make sure the dye baths were clear, they were, but I covered and popped them in the oven to make sure each skein was heated through and the dye was set.

Here they are after drying and re-skeining. These photos don't 

really show how vibrant (polite term for obnoxiously bright) this batch of yarn looks.  I find the acid dyed apricot has some greenish splotches that make it look bruised.  At some point I will knit something,  maybe a pattern by Mr. West would be appropriate,  or just stick them in the Etsy shop and see what happens.

Thanks for stopping by,

Blessed Be. 

Temperature Blanket, Concept

 So 2020 is over, but it has me thinking.  I do that sometimes.  A lot of people agree that it was not a great year.  A lot have people use stronger language when expressing how they feel about 2020.  What most people can agree on is that 2020 was a year of  change, on a global level and a personal level.  I'm a knitter, and sometimes a dyer.  I'm not going to recap all the social and political and personal ramifications of 2020.  I'm gonna knit a blanket.  A temperature blanket.  I'm gonna dye the yarn for the blanket.  It's going to be about change.

If you knit or crochet and are on the internet you have seen temperature blankets.  I'm not reinventing the spinning wheel.  The first thing you need for a temperature blanket is data points, which in most cases is a temperature on any given day at a specific time, or maybe the high or low for that day. Maybe both.  Here where I am in Virginia, especially in the spring and fall, the temperature swings can be impressive. A heavy sweatshirt in the morning and a t-shirt in the afternoon, or vice versa if  a front sweeps into the area.  So, I decided my data points would be the difference in the high and low temps of each day.

I did a quick check to see what kind of range I would get, and by quick I mean I checked the highs and lows for the first and fifteenth of every month in 2020.  Then math. 

The day with the least change was August 15th, a change of 4 degrees.

The day with the most change was November 15th, a change of 29 degrees.

By breaking that down into five degree increments that gives me six sections to represent with colors.  Now we go to the swatches.  

Yes, I swatch my dyes.  Knitted swatches.  Don't judge.

What six though? Do I want a full on rainbow or a section of the color wheel? I did another project with six colors that I dyed using tea, do I want to do that again? If I go rainbow do I use red, blue , yellow or magenta, cyan, yellow.  Do I want a color to represent "special" days like birthdays or other life events?  So. Many. Choices.

I love it. 

This is getting long and we haven't even thought about a pattern yet. Next post will be about the dye process.  With more pictures.

Blessed Be.