Dye experiments

I've been drawn to the idea of dying my own gradient yarns for a while, but was put off by imagined  lengthy & complicated dye sessions involving multiple of re-windings and dye baths. I recently dragged out the dyepot, inspired by this blog post & gave it a whirl. I wound my yarn blanks into very tight little balls, & placed them dry into the dye bath, using Ashford's purple dye. 

Two things that are immediately obvious: the 'purple' is really more a deep pink; and winding into a very tight little ball does not really give a gradient effect. More a graduated speckle on just a little bit of the yarn. The yarn is far too tight & too effective a resist for the dye to soak into the ball. 

I'm happy enough with the results though, especially after re-skeining & over-dyeing the yarn with complementary colours. 

These three mini-skeins became pink, & are intended for a jumper for the Small Human. 

And I added a mixture of blue & purple to this one (I've no idea what this will become).

Amazingly, these skeins perfectly match some sweet peas from my garden.