Pages

Thursday 30 June 2011

DYEING WOOL

back from germany and trying to get used to the cold temperatures at night and in the mornings i woke up this morning to an amazing 20.6 degrees C. the 'berg wind' gave us this wonderful warm weather (it'll most probably also bring rain tonight or tomorrow, therefore we have to enjoy it as long as it lasts).


last week i had tried to buy the dylon dyes for wool that i previously used but had
to learn that the product has been changed. the packages are larger and more expensive of course and - surprise, surprise - a 50g package of dye powder for about 4 times the price also dyes only 250g of fabric/fibre! it was also not clear from the text on the package what the dye would look like on wool (lighter than cotton was all the information given). well, we won't know before we try:

i mixed the dye powder of one pack
age with 250g of salt, added 500 ml warm water and stirred until dye powder and salt were dissolved. then i added another 3 l of cold water, stirred and added 300g of wet merino tops. they instantly took on colour, after 30 min i decided to add another 200g of wool. after an hour of soaking i removed the wool from the dye bath. the 200g added later turned out much lighter. several rinses were necessary to remove any access dye which however seemed to have lost its dyeing power. the 'ocean blue' i used came out as a strong royal blue. the second skein was dyed with 'denim blue'




pros: 1. no heating/simmering, 2. easy to add additional wool after short periods of time to gradate colours from dark to light 3. fast results
cons: 1. price (between R34 and R56 per package, depending on the colour - the little tins used to cost between R13 and R16), 2. most shops don't carry the whole range of colours, product has to be ordered.

Carol, i am sure you can give a more scientific explanation about these dyes. what are they? fibre reactive? or...?