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Friday 9 April 2010

the surprises of natural dyes

I promised to upload pix of my egg cozies, here they come:
both cozies and doily are unfelted yet. the egg cozies shrunk as expected and fit well, even though the colours changed a bit. the crochet shrunk far less and stayed much softer. which is ok for this purpose, I didn't want a board made from wool:)) crocheted egg cozies on the other hand would be rather floppy!
here the felted cozies - as you can see, the colours changed most in the lighter ones on the left and right.
this is the original light green yarn on the right - and the change to grey, both in the doily and the cozy.
and the light yellow, that changed to apricot - luckily not to grey, or the original yellow cozy would look rather sad:)) I have had colour changes before, when adding washing powder to the felting process with naturally dyed yarns, some changed dramatically. but I didn't use any on this load, so I suppose there must have been enough residue in the machine to work small changes. for this project it didn't do much damage - but if you plan on a larger one, where the colour changes might ruin it - I can only advise to either let the machine run for a clean at hottest settings - or not use the machine at all (or wash with powder on purpose and test for changes beforehand:)).
this is the rather mucky, yucky looking superwash top I used to mop up the leftover easter egg dyes. I think next time I'd separate the green/blues and red/yellows...
the yarn doesn't look bad though - as a singles. it's rather fine like this and I am not sure how to use it. I could ply it, but this would muddy up the colours even more. I could navajo ply - but that's not my favourite technique:) I might use a single colour yarn to ply it with - but first I need to spin the last of the three parts of the plait!

4 comments:

Bionic Laura said...

Those egg cozies are really cute!

I love those singles spun up. Roving is funny cos you might not love it when dyed but when all spun up it turns out lovely. I'd probably navajo ply it to keep the colours a bit nearer each other. But then I'm lazy like that!

Delighted Hands said...

The egg cozies turned out perfectly. Use a different color to ply it or mix it with itself-you might be pleasantly surprised with the results-be sure and post your decision!

Leigh said...

Maybe if you Navajo ply those singles you'll get to like it better. Not my favorite technique either, but sometimes it's useful! However, Delighted Hands has a good idea.

The egg cozies are very cute. They turned out very well.

m said...

I would ply it with something a tad finer in a plain colour. I have a few cones of fine silk from Uppingham and Colourmart that I use for this purpose. The red I have from Colourmart is a 2/28 called "Eastern maple".