melle_chantilly | Entries tagged with dyeing

I dyed 5 skeins of DK in Monolith "light" for two ravelers today. 5 skeins at the same time are hard work in my set up!

I think I need to start doing yoga again to tone my arms because, boy, are 5 wet skeins heavy at the end of the day!

I'm happy with the result but I need to improve my set up somehow. I think my stove is a bit too high, I managed to pour scalding water on my arms/feet four times (I'm okay! No visible burns) I might stick to dyeing 4 skeins at a time for now, until I can find a better layout for my stuff.

I've taken a couple of photos of my set up for the French Ravelry forum I go to.

Tomorrow I'm dyeing siiiilk! <3

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/25093.html

I'm very happy with my new dyeing job! I wanted to dye a yarn to match the colour of my cat's eyes. :) It took me 3 overdyes to get the colour I wanted.

What do you guys think? I love comments, so if you're reading me, you should leave a note. :)

Current Mood: bouncy
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/24829.html

Here's my second attempt at a bright purple:

I didn't quite like it. It lacked some depth and was a bit garish.

So I added some red:

Ah! I love it. It's called Abracadabra. :)

Current Mood: pleased
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/24892.html

Current Mood: exhausted
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/24499.html

I have received two new dyes from Dharma, a fluorescent yellow and a true blue (not turquoise). I've been playing with them along with dyeing a few (!) orders.

I want a true and bright purple and I failed. But I like the result I got.

I named it "Take Everything" (who's going to get the reference first?)

I also tried the pure blue and it is pretty! But blue, lol. So I poured some yellow on top of it. I really like the colour I got. It looks very similar to Aoi in picture but they're in fact quite different. I need to re-dye Aoi and take a proper photo of it on the same base.

"Ophelia"

Here's a photo of the two together with a skein of Grenadine I dyed for an order. It's hard to photograph multiple colours all at once! The colours are truer on the single pictures.

I'm going to try to dye the purple I want, maybe today. The two new skeins are for sale and repeatable.

Current Mood: busy
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/24045.html

Back home! But I haven't told you yet what we did on the last day of holidays.

anatsuno had knitted a Camino Bubbles in undyed yarn and wanted to dye it with a gradient of red and yellow.

We did it by dip dyeing it and it turned out rather nicely! It is bright and cheerful.

Here's our setup:

We first dyed it with a red gradient:

Then overdyed it with yellow:

And voilà:

Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/23580.html

Today is my last entire day here, I'm leaving tomorrow night. This was way too short!

We did some more dyeing yesterday for

anatsuno . Two skeins of merino silk in Aoi and Feuille.

We also both cast on our Viajante, mine with the merino lace in Matsuri, and anat with the Absinthe alpaca/BFL. Here's a sneak peek of my WIP. It is such a vibrant colours, knitting with it makes me happy.

Current Mood: awake
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/23457.html

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon dyeing while listening to Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails. Here's what I made (the yarn is still wet on the photos) :

1 skein of lace superwash merino in Feuille for

snakeling :

3 skeins of fingering superwash merino in Monolith also for

snakeling (she asked for it to be a bit less black than the orignal one) :

2 skeins of fingering superwash merino in Violettes Cristallisées for

crazybutsound :

And finally one skein of Alpha in fingering superwash merino for a raveler. I didn't take a photo of it but here's a photo

anatsuno took of all the yarns together (the paler yarns are yarns anatsuno dyed using the exhaust from our Absinthe session, then overdyed in black) :

Then I had wine. :P

Current Mood: good
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/23151.html

Here's the yarn we dyed for

anatsuno the other day. It is 50/50 baby alpaca/BFL in the Absinthe colourway. So interesting dyeing known colours onto different bases!

Current Mood: calm
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/23029.html

Yesterday we went at MC with

anatsuno ,

crazybutsound and

snakeling to celebrate MC and Crazybutsound's birthdays. :D I'm exhausted after hours of dyeing so it's going to be a photodump with few words.

Some crocheting happened.

Here's Snowball.

Some mandatory cat petting happened.

Snakeling made some amazing cranberry/white chocolate and some praliné/honeycomb muffins.

A lot of them. :D (That's just the tip of the iceberg)

Some presents were given.

I gave MC her Goth Diva, I think she liked it. :) Crazybutsound got a new computer. I think she liked it too. :D

My hair kept showing up in unexpected places. In Snakeling's tea and then in undyed yarn. So, yeah.

Muffins were eaten.

Some knitting happened.

And of course some dyeing. We dyed a custom colour together with MC. I think we'll call it Dame En Noir.
These are photos of the first steps. Then we added red.

Then we ate a delicious dinner and went home quite exhausted, full and happy. :)

Current Mood: pleased
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/22779.html

More dyeing happened yesterday! And some more today! Whoohoo! Here's a proper photo of the stellina alpaca in Violettes cristallisées:

I also dyed a skein of lace in Goth Diva as a present for our friend MC.

Here's a sneak peek of what we did yesterday as well. It isn't dry yet! :)

Here's a photo of Arsene the chair whisperer:

Current Mood: calm
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/22458.html

I'm on holidays! I'm in Ambierle with

anatsuno . So so good.

We did a little dyeing session yesterday. I dyed some superwash lace in Matsuri for a Viajante, first time with two in a pot at the same time! It went okay, I need to improve the technique a bit but I'm satisfied with the results. Anat wanted to try the Violettes Cristallisées colourway on some lovely alpaca with stellina. Working with non-superwash yarn is so different from superwash! I'm happy with the result, but it is less varigated than the superwash version, which we could have anticipated, since non-superwash takes the dye way more slowly.

Here are few photos taken this morning. Sorry for the blurry pot picture! The stellina yarn is still drying, so I'll photograph it tomorrow. My camera is being a dick so I am learning to make the focus manually (the blurry pic is with the AF, heh).

Current Mood: relaxed
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/22202.html

I spent the afternoon yesterday dyeing with a friend at home. It was her first time and it was much fun. She brought some yarns she bought, including some luscious baby alpaca (so soft!). She traded some for a skein of Biscuit and one of Alpha (that I dyed with her). She wants to make striped socks but Alpha bleeds a bit no matter how long I set it, so I'm a bit anxious about that. She says she's going to make a swatch and machine was it, so we'll see!

Here's what I made, in addition to Alpha:

It looks like what I wanted to make, yet I'm not sure I'm loving it. It's definitely not one of "my colours". What do you guys think?

I'm calling Indigo Eyes (after the Peter Murphy song), even though it isn't exactly indigo (does it bother you?) Edit: I'm changing the name to Ether because it reminds me of the blue ether bottles. It's definitely not indigo so...

So yeah, not in love with it, although paired with October Rust it looks like this, which I love:

Still, I will have to cook it again, probably in the microwave, because of this, ugh:

I don't know why the dye didn't take in this spot, it's a mystery. There are a few lighter, purpler spots (as you can see on the right) but these few pink strands stand out like a sore thumb, especially since the skein is less varigated that the other I've dyed so far.

Current Mood: contemplative
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/21927.html

Reskeining is apparently a touchy subject among dyers and yarnphiles alike. Some dyers reskein everything they dye (with the help of motor-operated swifts) because they say it showcases better how the yarn will look knitted. Some don't reskein because they say it's a way that can hide defects, or plainly because they like to see how the skein looked like when it was dyed and also that it helps them figure out if the yarn will pool.

I personally prefer the look of not reskeined yarn in general. I also don't see myself ever buying a $800 electric skein winder.

But I still wanted to try reskeining to see in real life what it does. I did it with my manual swift and ball winder (to be fair, Math did most of the work because I overestimated how tiring this would be).

There you go, Monolith before and after reskeining:

See how the blue flashes are more evenly distributed? What do you guys think? Better before or after?

Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/21685.html

Math says this colour reminds him of the monolith in A Space Odyssey. You'll have to ask him why.

Anyway, I tried to do something different, what do you guys think?

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/21453.html

I dyed that orange-red I'd been thinking of for quite a while. Reds are so hard to photograph, omg!

I want to call it Matsuri ("festival" in japanese), but Math says it's weird because of the sushi brand.

I'm also working on a survey for those who will be trying my yarns, to make things easier. I'll post a draft in a few days.

Current Mood: satisfied
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/21063.html

I sold 4 hanks to a perfect stranger on Ravelry yesterday. I'm baffled. And ecstatic.

I've sold everything I have dyed now, except a couple of skeins. Okay, it's dead cheap but still. Amazing.

I keep tweaking and re-tweaking my yarn photos in photoshop (trying mostly to have a nice background, not too white, but a pure grey). I keep re-uploading them to Ravelry, and I'm probably flooding everyone's feed, I'm sorry!

Here's my latest tweak of Aoi.

I have to dye another hank (since I have none left) to take a "poop pile" picture like for the other colourways (yes, I used to think the artistically laid skeins looked a bit like turds and I told Clementine so, a while ago. And now I'm doing it! Putting my yarn in poop shape for photo purposes! Crazy. Clementine is making fun of me. :D)

Here's an album with the pictures of all my colours. Comments about the photo quality are very welcome.

Current Mood: excited
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/20642.html

Here's what I've been up to for the past few days:

A Raveler friend order for Absinthe and Goth Diva. It's all ready to ship.

I'm also done reading the 68 pages of the Love to Dye Ravelry forum. READ ALL THE THINGS! (I might start again at the beginning, in case I've missed something, shhh!)

Current Mood: happy
Crossposts: http://melle-chantilly.livejournal.com/20367.html

So, I'm told I should blog on dreamwidth! :D

I tried to dye a pastel. Oh boy, did I fail. I got a lot of helpful advice on Ravelry on how to do it and I will try again. Soon.

In the meantime, here's my pastel fail, and the two black overdyes I made to get a colour I liked.

Nope, not pastel. I didn't like how the purple clashed with the pink either.

A little bit of black later: better! Still too vivid and clashy for me.

A second dip in the black: yay! That's more like it.

I called this colour Violettes Cristallisées (Candied violets). It's a bit silly and pretentious maybe to give names to my colours already but it's fun!