I've been experimenting more with some of my dyes that use Red #3 and this week I got really exciting results! I've been trying to get some of my dyes to break, so that my yarn ended up variegated. You might recall my failure to break black dye. I wasn't trying to break the dye this time, but my attempts to set my Red #3 properly nevertheless left me with beautifully broken pale violet yarn.Wilton's violet includes Red #3 and blue dye. As I discussed before, acid needs to be added slowly when dyeing with Red #3 to avoid crocking (the dye settling on the outside of the yarn, coming off on your hands and all available surfaces, instead of setting into the yarn). Blues, on the other hand, require more acid to set, generally taking longer than other colors.The result? When I used my Red #3 dyeing process, the reds set in first and then the blues, leaving me with pretty blue and purple variegated yarn. I'm so happy with it!
You have no idea how hard it was to take a picture that showed the variegation! I wandered around the house at various times of day and night, messing with shadows and moving the exposure to different places in the frame -- lots of work went into this picture! Actually, more than went into dyeing the yarn, which is one of this lazy girl's favorite things about dyeing.