Stephanie - Aurora Borealis Glow Up

 Stephanie - Aurora Borealis Glow Up 

While I'm in the middle of moving to a new place I have done the thing we all do when moving, purge and downsize. First thing I figured out on packing were my craft and dye supplies, the important stuff lol!

In the meantime that leaves me without much to do till I get settled, so I decided to be all practical and just wait till I got to my new place before starting anew project. Instead I told myself to use up the remaining left over bits of thread from other dye jobs to just play around with making throw away doilies, just to keep busy.

But guys, guys....I hate it! Lol, I kept this huge ball of left over thread from the previous dye jobs and just felt like I can't just throw this away, what a waste! But making something that wasn't pretty and that I wouldn't end up keeping and would just be thrown away made me sad and unmotivated. As a matter of fact my dear friend Kira actually took the left over thread ball away from me because she knew I wouldn't be able to do it myself Lol!

Then Monday rolled around, Canadian Thanksgiving, and with the day off and nothing to do I just decided to go for it and not only dye up some thread - one last job - but to do so for a new pattern that I haven't even tested for how much thread I will need! Shock, don't know how that's going to turn out if I run out of thread but hopefully my calculation of 100gms/550yds will be enough.

For this project I am planning on doing the pattern Stephanie By Olga Mattheis  below

Stephanie By Olga Mattheis

She looks small in the picture but the pattern lists final size as 16inches so I'd say its a medium so far, really looking forward to it, I love Olga's patterns and designs and this little star shaped design is pretty cool.

I'd like to make a note here, no one asked but, I have a big collection of doilies that I favorite on Ravelry whenever a new doily pattern comes out. My goal is to do as many of them as I can, but the designs are just so fantastic I really marvel at how someones brain must be able to work to create patterns like this. So I try my best to give each designer a chance and not buy all patterns from just one designer. Haha, I know that's silly to think of not playing favorites, I dunno but everyone's designs deserve a chance. But I do have some favorite designers whose designs I can make over and over and Olga is one of them.

With the recent order from Dharma for my birthday I have been wanting to use them whenever I can, so I tried to work them into this project.

The inspiration for this dye job is the photo below of the aurora borealis found online

I was going to do a bright green into a nebula navy, but then I found the above photo and my little brain just couldn't resist the splash of pink/purple in the middle, so I threw in some hot hibiscus as well.

This time I'm doing just the one dye job and went for consistency instead of winging it with bunches of experimental choices, it was tempting to listen to the voice in my head that said, I wonder what will happen if I do this, but I resisted!

The Particulars

Intended Pattern: Stephanie by Olga Mattheis 

Thread Need: 100gms/550yds approx - this is an estimate since I have never done this pattern before

Colors:

For the dye amounts I decided to go with my previous hunch on using the Dharma Procion Dye Yield Estimator on their website, it states on the website that the calculator is meant for full immersion dyeing or tub dyeing which this isn't. In past posts, see Murky March Elune and Dharma Order posts, I figured that I would have to double the amount of water or halve the amount of dye powder recommended on the site to get a match to the color chips on Dharma. I was a little uneasy doing it since I committed to just one dye job and not an extra to experiment on, but hey consistency isn't cheap haha.

Note - Dharma doesn't give you the amount of water needed to mix up your dyestock, but based on my previous calculations from other books and instructions, I always calculate the amount of dyestock to match the weight of fiber/thread/yarn that I am dyeing. So in the case of 2*50gm balls, I would enter in the calculator 50gms for Hot Hibiscus and mix up the recommended amount of dye into 50ml of water. This is not the amount of water I would use for tub dyeing, for those calculations I recommend looking them up, Dharma has a tub dyeing tutorial that lists that info along with many other sources.

In the past I also decided that instead of mixing up half the amount of weight for dyestock water amount for each color, ie 25ml instead of 50ml for Hot Hibiscus because it was only going to be half the color on one ball, I decided to use the full 50ml as I find I get less or no striking/white spots when i do.

1. Hot Hibiscus - Dharma 181 - OWG= 2.0%

 Dye powder amount = .99gms - I went with 1gm - in 50ml of water

2. Bright Green - Jacquard - used Dharma 29 Bright Green for Calculation - OWG= 2.0%

Dye powder amount = 1.99gms - I decided to half the dye powder to 1gm in 100ml water instead of 2gms in 200ml water, to save on dye powder - the Bright Green gets more water and dye since it will be dyeing half of each ball so that = 100gms/100ml

3. Nebula Navy - Dharma - 186 - OWG %8.0

Dye powder amount = 7.99gms - I did for the Navy what I did for the Bright Green, instead of 8gms in 100ml water, I went with 4gms in 50ml water.

As you can see for my test swatches on paper towel the Nebula Navy is still quite dark but it's not pitch black as it was when I dyed my little spandex shorts before, which is what I'm hoping for to see a little more transition on the Navy in the blue with the Bright Green so it's not such a stark transition. 

The Bright Green is a little paler than I hoped, but I'm counting on the Hot Hibiscus and Navy to help darken it up a bit in places. 

The Hot Hibiscus surprised me the most when I was pouring the color on, it looked very red/orange, but as you can see in the sample it turns out very pink, this is likely because it is not made with turquoise like fuchsia. I was tempted to use my new fuchsia dye but I've had problems with it breaking/streaking if it isn't at a really high saturation, so I went with Hot Hibiscus this time.

Method: 

1. Standard pour on method

2. 100gms divided into 2 50gm balls, Hibiscus/Green and Green/Navy

3. Wrap is done loose, center of 1st color is wrapped very loose and then dipped in a bit of dye to saturate all the way to the center of the ball, then wrapped loose for halfish, 1st color poured on, wrap tight till 1st color only shows through as pale shade, wrap the rest of the ball loose and pour on 2nd color.

4. Color sequence went, Hibiscus 1st then Green 2nd on the first ball, and Green 1st then Navy 2nd on the 2nd ball.

5. Put dyed balls in separate Ziploc bags to batch for 24hours

6. Un-wind balls onto a niddy noddy to make into a skein

7. Rinse out skeins, first cool rinse to get rid of soda ash, then 1-2 hot soaks in soapy water

8. Hang up to dry

9. Wind dried skeins into ball for the win!

 

Well let's see how they turned out in the wash:

The Hot Hibiscus really turned out a lovely shade of pink despite how red it looked going on when dyeing, I didn't quite get the exact color as in the picture above, maybe I should have used Fuchsia to get something more purple, as soon as blue violet comes back in stock at Dharma I'm going to snap some up.

Hot Hibiscus & Bright Green just after the rinse

But OMG look how awesome the Navy and Green turned out! I admit when I was first unwinding this guy I was pretty nervous because the navy was going on for a loooongggg time and very dark, but then I started to see the speckles of Bright Green come through and I couldn't be happier! 

Bright Green & Nebula Navy after the wash

 

Well maybe I could, as you can see from the wash out the Navy doesn't have much variation/gradation of its color but hopefully when it dries I may see some more lighter Navy instead of this pitch black Navy here. But the Bright Green flecks and streaks under the Navy makes me so happy! This mix of the colors with no white streaking was better than I hoped, it really makes it look like the green on the aurora lights streaking into the sky to me. I think a great deal of the green is trapped under all that navy, perhaps cutting the dye powder amount in half wasn't enough, but I'm still happy, lets see how the dry out comes along!

 

After drying:

Definitely love the hot pink, but not an exact match for the inspiration pic

Was hoping to see some more navy variation from the dark almost black navy, but still happy!

All those little pigtails, the knots and tangles from being rinsed and dried kind ruin the picture, but shes still a beauty!

 

Looking pretty good guys! I'm really happy with how well the Bright Green matched between them in the end, I think I may just wind these 2 together into one ball instead of 2!

 

After winding:

 

Well aren't they pretty as a picture, now married together as one! Plus a picture of my handmade Nostepinne, my dad whittled this out of some driftwood for me for Christmas last year, one of a kind! I use it to wind all my thread into balls, so simple but so useful.

 Whoohoo! now off to the races to make Stephanie, I hope it turns out!

And now after being worked up and blocked: 

I was able to get to the end of the pattern with lots left over of the green/navy ball so I frogged that whole ball and then frogged the green/fuchsia ball all the way back to round 29 and started from there because I didn't like how late the green/navy ball started, that was a lot of green and not enough navy.

Then horror's, I ran out of thread just at the end! Gah, so I took up the left over green ball I had cut out and finished off the doily to see how much thread I would need, cut that bit off and wound into a ball - I estimate no more than 2-5gm/ 11-28yds approx. was needed to finish off - then I went back and frogged everything up to where the 2nd ball had started, re-attached the remaining first ball and carried on from there and this time I didn't run out!

Thankfully this is a really fun pattern to make so it didn't suck to have to redo it, and I am still happy with how the color transition worked out, from there, I think I only finished maybe 2/3 of a round with the left over green before going onto the second ball of thread.

 And here is the result!

Move Out Dye Job

Move Out Dye Job

I recently moved out of my apartment but had 2 weeks to spare before the lease was up, so while packing the last bits and bobs I decided why not one last dye job before I leave!

As the Stephanie Aurora Borealis experiment went so well I decided to go all in on the 2 ball 3 colors dye job practice that I have picked up and decided to dye 3 different color ways across 6 balls of thread, 2 balls each color way for 100 gm balls total, 50gm x2 balls each colorway.

A while back my sister asked me to make a nice purple and turquoise doily for a work colleague, I had some lovely success with fuchsia and aquamarine mixing for some really nice purple on this project, so I thought I would give it a go again.

Avgusta Pattern by Regina Gordeeva

 

But half way through the dyeing process I realized I had divided the 100gm ball into 2 50gm balls just like the others, doh!, so I did a quick recalculation and decided to throw some turquoise in there for good measure and made it a 3 way color gradient, hope it turns out well.

I also seemed to have a bad case of the dumbs because I totally messed up my dye stock calculation lol! I blame it on the moving making me so tired haha.

Colors:

Here's where my sleep deprived brain played some tricks on me, as per my last experiment I went ahead and used the Dharma procion yield estimator calculator, and then halved the amount of dye powder recommended and intended to use that amount in 100ml water for each color total. 

In the past I figured that using the full amount of dye powder recommended by the calculator should be cut in half due to the fact that the calculator is based on immersion or tub dyeing where the dye stock is added to a large amount of water. 

Since I am effectively painting the dye onto the thread that dye stock strength may not be needed, so in an effort to use less dye powder I decided I would halve the amount of dye powder recommended by the calculator.

However I accidentally put in 200gms on the calculator and then halved that amount of dye powder which would have put me at full strength for the 100gms/ml dye stock mixing, but then I mixed it all up in 200 ml water, so somehow I actually ended up with the right DOS but had a lot of dye stock left over lol!

How my calculation should have looked;

Fuchsia = 100gms [that's 2*50gm balls] x 2.9% = 2.9gms/2 = 1.5gms in 100 ml water [that's 2*50ml for each ball dyed with fuchsia even though technically each 50gm ball would only be dyed half fuchsia, or 25gms/ml, I have been going in for the full 50gm/ml ball to cut down on white spots/striking]

How I actually did it - wrong-ish by the way lol;

Fuchsia = 200 gms [wrong! haha] x 2.9% = 5.8gms /2 = 2.5gms or 1/2 tsp in 200 ml water [wrong again! should have been 100ml]

So even though I managed to get the right dye powder amount I used the wrong amount of water, that ironically actually worked out with the right DOS because I doubled the water instead of using the right weight of powder and dividing it in half and mixing up only 100ml.

That's ok, as I decided to try my hand at tie dyeing a tapestry with some random white cotton fabric pulled from the bunch of junk I had to purge during the move. 

Deep Yellow - Dharma #4 - OWG= 1.9% 

2.5GMS [1/2TSP] in 200ml water

Fire Engine Red - Jacquard - OWG= 5.3% [used Dharma Fire Red for calculation]

5gms [1 tsp] in 200ml water

Fuchsia - Dharma #13 - OWG= 2.9%  

2.5GMS [1/2TSP] in 200ml water

Aquamarine - Jacquard - OWG = 1.5% -I used Dharma Cayman Isle Green for the calculator since I think that's closer to Jacqaurds Aquamarine

1.5gms [1/4 tsp] in 200ml water 

Turquoise - Jacquard - OWG 4.0% 

2.5gms [1/2 tsp] in 200ml water 

 

From Left, Fuchsia, Fire Engine Red, Deep Yellow and Aquamarine - Not picture Turquoise which was mixed last minute on dye day

Method:

1. Standard pour on method  

2. 100gms divided into 2 50gm balls *3, Fuchsia/Fire Engine Red, Fire Engine Red/Golden Yellow, Fire Engine Red/Golden Yellow, Golden Yellow/Aqua, Aqua/Turquoise, Turquoise/Fuchsia

3. Wrap is done loose, center of 1st color is wrapped very loose and then dipped in a bit of dye to saturate all the way to the center of the ball, then wrapped loose for halfish, 1st color poured on, wrap tight till 1st color only shows through as pale shade, wrap the rest of the ball loose and pour on 2nd color.

4. Put dyed balls in separate Ziploc bags to batch for 24hours

5. Un-wind balls onto a niddy noddy to make into a skein

6. Rinse out skeins, first cool rinse to get rid of soda ash, then 1-2 hot soaks in soapy water

7. Hang up to dry

8. Wind dried skeins into ball for the win!

 

Well let's see how they turned out in the wash:

Fuchsia/Fire Engine Red

Fire Engine Red/Deep Yellow

Fire Engine Red/Deep Yellow

Deep Yellow/Aquamarine

Aquamarine/Turquoise

Turquoise/Fuchsia

 

After drying:

The colors ended up coming out more muted than expected especially the fire engine red, but maybe that's the color its supposed to be or I maybe should have used Carmine Red, but it may also have come down to a variety of factors such as its getting colder, the Jacquard dyes are getting a bit old 1+year, and maybe the screw up with the DOS calculations lol! 

Fire Engine Red/Fuchsia

Fire Engine Red/Deep Yellow

All together

Aquamarine/Deep Yellow

Deep Yellow/Fire Engine Red

All wrapped up

Fuchsia/Turquoise

Turquoise/Aquamarine

All wrapped up together

The one odd thing happened on this skein of Fuchsia and turquoise, I don't know why but there was a lightening of the ends of the fuchsia, I figure that it must have been due to heat or lack there of.

I also noted some more white streaking than in the past, perhaps next time I will make my dye stock with urea to keep the thread wet during batching.

After winding:

Deep Yellow/Fire Engine Red/Fuchsia wound into a ball

Fire Engine Red/Deep Yellow/Aquamarine wound into a ball

Fuchsia/Turquoise/Aquamarine wound into a ball

Overall I am pretty happy with these skeins, will have to see them worked up into a doily to see how happy I am with them in the end, overall they are pretty good, more muted than I would have like and more streaking than anticipated, but still good.
 

Normally, here is where I would feature the end product all worked up and on display, but since this is 3 balls of thread, so i don't expect to finish anytime soon, so I will go ahead and post the follow up pictures of finished projects in another post.