Glow-Up Teagan

Glow-Up Tegan

A new glow-up Post yay!

How it always begins

The idea sketch

The rinse out

Wound up and waiting to use

lovely color saturation but the transition from fuchsia to lilac is very stark and breaks up the design

very little color transition between fuchsia and lilac

much more mixing between aqua and fuchsia

This was a learning experience for me the same way that the Birgitta taught me a lesson about mixing golden yellow with any kind of blue. This time around though I think I may try and replicate this color way with a couple of changes.

Colors used were, Aquamarine [contains turquoise], Turquoise, Fuchsia [contains turquoise], Lilac.

As you can see in the center from the shift from turquoise to fuchsia there's some nice color mixing to turn the color a bit purple. On the other hand there was not much mixing of colors between the fuchsia and lilac. I think that's because the lilac is basically comprised of Medium Blue and Fir Engine Red, no turquoise there for the fuchsia to play nice with in the mix. This has brought similar result as with Birgitta in that the color change from fuchsia to lilac is quite stark and breaks up the flow a bit.

I really like these colors and this colorway so I'm not going to abandon it just yet, in the future I think I will experiment with using aquamarine, no turquoise because it didn't seem to show up much anyway, fuchsia which will play nice with the aquamarine since they both have turquoise, then pour on some magenta and then the lilac and see if those 2 colors play nicer and mix together better than with fuchsia. 

Or it could be just that I put too much thread between the fuchsia and the lilac and should have let them mix more. So next time I will make up 2 versions of this color way, one that uses fuchsia and magenta and one that only uses fuchsia but lets the fuchsia and lilac mix more closely together.

 Still a lovely result, but could be better. Stay tuned for follow up!

Frozen Dye Strength Experiment

Frozen Dye Strength Experiment

Ok, well after a long weekend of dyeing gradient balls of thread I was left with a bunch of left over dye, some of which got used on some tie dye t-shirts for my dads birthday and a pair of Tulip dyes dyeable socks. All I can say about that endeavor is that tie dyeing is a lot harder than it looks lol! But after al of that even I still had a lot of warm black and lilac dye left over, so I thought I would try a new experiment.

In the past I have frozen dye stock into ice cubes which I successfully used to dye some gradient thread balls. At the time I used up all my frozen dye cubes so didn't have the ability to answer a question. 

If frozen dye stock can be used effectively after being frozen for a day, how long could you keep frozen dye stock before it lost its strength?

Well there was only one thing for it I guess, better use up this left over warm black and lilac dye stock and freeze them then test them out over a series of a few days-weeks to see how long they keep.

I really should have labeled these lol, was hard to tell which was purple and which was black!

So, I've frozen up 21 ice cubes that I would wager are about 5ml each, there's only 5 in warm black which i will test last, and the other 26 cubes are in lilac purple, which turned out a lot darker than I would think of lilac being. Anyway, both dye stock solutions were made to 5% DOS with 5gms of dye in 100ml urea water, then frozen over 3 days.

After melting in about 30min

So here is the first test after 3 days of being frozen how well do 3 cubes of lilac - about 15mls - turn out after thawing back to liquid. I painted up a 10gm skein of beige Aunt Lydia's size 10 crochet thread after having washed it and soaked it a soda ash solution, I did not dilute the melted dye stock it is at full 5% DOS here.

Post painting

Next up I added 100ml plain water to the remaining dye stock so that I could try and salvage a gradient gone wrong. I wasn't happy with how pale these pinks and purples turned out and the aqua at the last layer basically just washed out completely. So now I'm overdyeing it with this diluted experiment in hopes of making a better look for it.

What I seem to have ended up with is a change from turquoise to a more midnight blue, which I rather like, we shall see how it turns out in the rinse tomorrow.

 

I have decided to go weekly, so last week was  April 16th, washed out pretty dark and good DOS.

This week April 23,2021 seems still very potent.

And one more week and the color overall seems about the same strength. I had more cubes but then a friend in need ran out of some yarn I dyed for her before finishing her project so I sacrificed my remaining experiment to get that all fixed up for her, the yarn turned out wonderfully.

From right to left the 1st week to the 3rd week, all basically the same color result after about a week of freezing in between

My friend's knitted top, front piece with the the original yarn I dyed for her but that ran out

The wash out of the extra yarn we dyed up with remaining purple and black cubes with some fuchsia and blue thrown in there to match the original 

After drying, so lovely!

And all wound up and in use to happily finish up a project! 

I think it's safe to say for now that its possible to freeze left over dyestock and it will remain potent for future use for at least a month, which is good news for me and others who don't want to waste dyestock.

I have found that claims of dyestock staying good, in its liquid form, so long as the dye has not interacted with soda ash and is kept in a sealed container in a cool or refrigerated place to be hit and miss. In the past I might not have kept them in a cool enough place or a tightly enough sealed container so, who knows. So I'm pretty happy with the knowledge that I can freeze any of my left over dyestock and use it again in at least a month or so.

Glow-Up - Amal

 Glow-Up - Amal

My 3rd and final post for today is the Glow-Up - Amal post.

Once upon a time there was a jumbo ball of thread from Walmart and they grew up into a beautiful doily called Amal. Used 75gms from the ball, crocheted with a 2.00mm hook, I had maybe 10gms left over but that's ok by me, better than running out.

Original color pallet sketch

Color recipe for this piece is as follows, jacquard procionmx fiber reactive dye in Bright green, Emerald and Teal. Bright Green stock = 5% DOS, 2.5gms dye in 50ml water, I wasn't using a lot of this color so I reduced my dye and stock water, used 10ml here. Emerald stock = 5% DOS 5gms dye in 100ml water, used 30ml here. Teal stock = 5% DOS 7.5gms dye in 150ml water, used lots of teal that day, used 30ml here.

All washed and ready to dry, luckily not so many white spots at the beginning likely because bright green tends tto break to a lemon yellow a bit like this.

All wound up and ready to work.

Very pleased with the color progression on this one

Really happy with how straight I was able to block this guy to this time around, very lovely peice that works up quick. Pattern Amal by Elena Bojkova

Glow-Up - Birgitta

 Glow-Up - Birgitta

It's time for another Glow-Up post, Actually I finished these 3 posts I'm doing today about a week or 2 apart but didn't get around to blocking and photographing them until this weekend so they are all coming in a bunch.

But this Glow-up is for the lovely Birgitta Pattern by Zoya M. I love this pattern, you would be surprised how quick and easy it is to work up given how detailed the center looks buts actually quite fun.

Where it all begins, the jumbo ball of white thread from Walmart

original color pallet sketch

Color recipe for this is as follows, using jacquard procionmx fiber reactive dyes in Peach, Golden Yellow, Aquamarine & Teal. Peach stock = 5gms dye with 100ml water, I used 5ml of this diluted in an additional 20ml of water to make it paler and then used 10ml of that here. Golden Yellow stock = 5% DOS with 5gms dye in 100ml water, used 25ml here. Aquamarine stock = 5% DOS 5gms dye in 100ml water, used 20ml here. Teal stock = 5% DOS 7.5gms in 150ml water, I used teal on more than half of this dye days projects so I had to mix up more to get a 5% DOS, used 45ml here. 

All washed up and ready to dry, I did end up not using the extra white at the center to bypass having to dye the center of the doily like with Idunn, but that was ok as I didn't run out of thread at the end anyway.

All wrapped up and waiting to be used

I was surprised and a little disappointed home grass green the golden yellow and aquamarine turned when they mixed with each other but that's just something to keep in mind for next time.

And there she is all lovely and block, pattern Birgitta by Zoya Matyushenko

Glow-Up - Idunn

 Glow-Up - Idunn

What's a glow-up you say? According to Collins dictionary "phrasal verb. If you say that someone glows up, you mean that they become more mature, confident, and attractive" 

If you have ever been on Buzzfeed and seen their posts about people's glow-up you know what I mean, going from the awkward teen stage to ones confident adult self. So I thought I'd do the same for my dye projects to show their progress from being an "awkward" ball of white thread, till they get dyed and then finally made into a crochet doily. 

 

So here's my first post, I present to you Glow-Up Edition:

 

Such humble beginnings

Original color pallet sketch

 My recipe for the colors used are as follows, using Jacquard Fiber Reactive procion mx dye in the colors fuchsia, peach and emerald. Fuchsia stock solution = 3% DOS with 2.5gms dye in 100ml water, used 10ml here. Peach stock solution = 5% DOS with 5gms dye in 100ml water, but to make it less orange I diluted 5ml of stock solution in 20ml of water and used that 25ml here. Emerald stock solution = 5% DOS with 5gms dye in 100ml water, used 35ml here. 

And then a lovely dye job in fuchsia, peach and emerald green

All dried and wound up into a  ball for use

All wound up and ready to be crocheted

After being crocheted into Idunn pattern, was unhappy with how much white the center came out with originally so I decided to just dye it fuchsia again and next time i won't make the first part of the ball so tight so that the first color penetrates more deeply.

Little white spots left over from winding the ball too tight originally

Spot treated with soda ash water in the center then spot dyed with some more fuchsia

Left to batch overnight in a bag

Post rinse, I rinsed very carefully just the center to make sure there was no run off before laying flat to dry on paper towels

And the finale after being blocked again, so lovely

I'm ready for my close up!

And there she is folks, after 2 dye jobs she's all Glown-Up!