Breaking Wilton's Violet with Dye Pot Weekly on Marled Wool Yarn

I started watching The Dye Pot Weekly Series on YouTube by Rebecca from ChemKnits.  She's been doing some really neat experiments, and demonstrating some excellent and varied techniques for dying wool yarn, especially with food coloring.  So I decided to play along -- at least for some of them.  At this point, she's up to over 100 videos, so I have quite a bit of catch-up to do!

The basket above is hand-dyed yarn from my very productive weekend of dying fibers!  This is all dyed with Wilton's Violet icing dye (food coloring).  You can literally "break" into into the compnent colors to get this kind of variation.

I picked up some marled Fisherman's Wool yarn at Joann's, along with the Wilton's Violet icing food coloring with the intention of breaking it, just like she did in the video.  The yarn comes in an 8-oz. skein or 227 grams and 465 yards.  I broke it into 2 working hanks for this project, each about 113 grams.  The label says it's "100%virgin wool containing natural oils."  It's a medium weight - 4 - yarn.  I guess the important thing is that it's a 4 that I recognize as a medium weight #4 yarn.   It took up the dye readily, and other than soaking it in room temperature tap water, it did not need scouring.

Here is ChemKnit's video for reference, in case you want to try it, too:


The beauty of using some of these techniques is that the Wilton's food coloring is safe to use in your kitchen.  I don't feel like I have to go down to my freezing cold, wet studio in the basement to do this level of crafting.  I can stay right in the kitchen to work this color magic!

General directions:

• Pre-soak 100 grams of wool yarn (in a skeined loop) in room temperature water for 20-30 minutes

•  Simmer 8 cups water (approximate) with
• 1 T white vinegar

• Melt 1/2 tsp Wilton's Violet icing gel in
• 1/2 cup hot water

When the yarn is sufficiently pre-soaked, and your water is simmering, add the dye to the simmering pot.    Squeeze out the water from your pre-soaked yarn.  You want the yarn to take up the dye, which will make it easier if it's not already water-logged.

Begin dip-dying the yarn [Refer to Rebecca's video for the proper technique.]   For example, you may want to put in 1/3 (or less) to begin with.  When the reds seem to be taken up (the color of the dye in the pot will change to a darker blue), put in the next 1/3 of the yarn hank and dip and let it sit for 5 minutes.   When the color of the dye changes to a lighter blue, put in the rest of the yarn.  At this point, Rebecca says to add 2 more T of white vinegar to help the remaining blues take up.  Let sit for 5-10 minutes.

You'll know it's done when the water  in the dye pot is clear (This always amazes me!).  That means the dye has been taken up by the yarn.  In all my experiments this wkd, there remained some blue dye in the pot -- even if I let it sit for hours to cool.

Then you can remove the yarn from the dye pot.  Once it's cool, you can wash with a little Dawn dish soap, and rinse until the water runs clear.

I did it twice with different results --mostly due to technique, I think.

Fresh out of the pot.

The first round, I tried to follow the video as closely as possible, but I don't think I fully understood the dip dye technique, and dumped in the full hank of yarn before the color changes.  I think I was thinking about space dyeing.  That's why the first hank is pretty uniformly raspberry and purple -- no blues.

THis one shows some of the marled yarn I stared with, so you can see what a difference the dye makes-- even if it is "just" food coloring.

This is how it looked after it was dry and ready for presentation.  

Different purples, but not so broken yet.

Using the Crock Pot on the Second Round
For the second round, I used the crock pot which is a method I'm more comfortable with.   I did the pre-soaking in the crock pot with 1/4 cup vinegar.  I set the crock-pot to low and left it for 2 hours for the pre-soak.     I ran out to do some errands (one of which was to purchase more wool yarn for these experiments!)     When I got back, I mixed until dissolved:

• 1/2 tsp Wilton's Violet 
• in 1 cup hot water 
• plus 2 T white vinegar.

When pre-soaking your yarn in the crock pot, pull it out and squeeze the vinegar water back into the pot.  Set the wet yarn aside for a bit.    Pour in the dye mix, but don't stir the pot ...

This time, I held back the full hank of yarn to give the different color components of the dye a chance to take up at different times.  So for about 10 minutes, I had 2/3 the hank hanging out of the pot while the magentas struck.  The second color to take was the purple, so I let it sit for another 5-10 minutes. then finally the blues.   When the dye is a lighter blue, I made an opening in the pot, and poured in another 2 T. white vinegar, then put in the remaining yarn.

You can tell when the change happens because it's very visual : the water in the dye pot changes color.  It happens at different time intervals -- You just have to watch it.  It's a remarkable process!

I let the whole skein sit in the crock pot on low for about an hour.  After that, I turned the heat off, and let it sit to cool down, hoping that the yarn would soak up any remaining blue dye left in the water.   Even after the water was cold, there was still some light blue dye left in the water.  Not a big deal ...  On to the wash and rinse stage, then hung to dry.  I was very happy with what I was seeing -- looked more like Rebecca's skein with lighter blue at the end.

The breaking worked much better on this round, where you can see the magenta, purple, blue and turquoise.

I am very pleased with the way both hanks turned out, even though they are different.  Both lovely dyed yarns!

Here they are side-by-side.  Wow!

 

 This shows the variety of purples in the skein from the first round. 

The marl gets a little lost, but still a neat effect -- subtle.

I'll be writing about the other techniques in coming posts.  Stay tuned!