Shadow Colours

Saturday's dyeing day at the Guild was a good mixture of colour theory and practical exercises. The last exercise of the day involved mixing a secondary colour with it's complement. These are colours which are opposite each other on the colour wheel. I chose marine blue and citrus orange. Here are my samples: You can see how the blue gets duller as more orange is added. The second bag from the right contains 4 parts of orange to 1 part of blue. The wool is dark-grey, almost black. The other two gray-blue samples are colours I might use, even though my personal preference is for bright, clear colours.

We did the dyeing in the snap-lock bags. It's a great way to manage lots of small samples at the same time. They can all go in the pot and the colours stay separate, unless one of the bags bursts--that happened a couple of times. I have yet to rinse these samples. My little skeins are hanging out to dry. I'll post photos of them soon.

Rainbow Dyeing

A whole day of dyeing at the Guild yesterday. I came home with sore feet and lots of samples. I need to finish rinsing them--the samples that is. I also made this lovely big skein in primary colours. This is a "cram pot" dyed skein. The idea is to use as little water as possible, so the colours don't bleed into each other. Of course, if there's not enough water, the colours won't be distributed through the skein. So it's a bit of a balancing act. I wouldn't normally use all three primaries in the one skein. I've commented before that red + blue + yellow = muddy brown. But This was a challenge, and it's turned out ok, I think. There are a few light patches and a couple of muddy spots, but lots of contrast. One thing that surprised me is that there are hardly any areas of secondary colour, so mostly the dye stayed where it was put.

I now have a new tool on my wish list. We did the cram pot dyeing in an old electric frypan. It was ideal for sprinkling the colours and keeping the water as shallow as possible. On the other hand, I'd better not acquire any more space occupying objects before I've tidied up a bit more.