Technique- residual dye reduction (and some ramblings)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! It is not celebrated over here in the UK, but I like the idea of it, so I thought I would join in a little. I am thankful for you lovely people who pop by to read my ramblings and leave comments, for knitting and for lots of lovely things both fiber related and non in my life.

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On a more fibrey note, I had a genius idea (so modest!) a few weeks back when I was having a dying frenzy. Residual dye is a PITA, it takes ages and lots of water to clean out. The idea was to cook the dye pot until it is about done, then to chuck in a spare chunk of undyed fibre that I had floating around and cook for a little longer.

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The undyed fluff slurps up the leftover, reducing the amount of residual. One piece can also be used a couple of times as long as the colours are similar (red fluff into a dye pot of yellow is going to make some shade of orange I suspect, even if the red looks fixed). This piece of fluff went through a blue pot and a mixed purples pot. As a bonus you get a small piece of interestingly coloured fibre to play with.

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I had a second pot of blue but had run out of undyed fibre, so I chucked a swatch in instead (evidence that I do occasionally, but very rarely, make a swatch). Ideally I would have planned ahead and soaked these items, but since it was a spur of the moment thing I didn't, even unsoaked it worked quite nicely.

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This was my first try at dying a preknitted piece, I was quite pleased with how it came out, although that may have been because it was just a simple square.

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I also did something that shows I am truly addicted to knitting- yesterday I did no knitting all day, just to show that I could (I am told giving up anything for a day/month or two, to prove you can is a sure sign of addiction). I got quite a lot of tidying done, but today I am back on the needles. Meh, there are worse things to be addicted to, it is cheaper than drugs! (possibly- scowls at expensive yarns)