Today’s experiments: two concurrent dye jobs! Again, we have our setup:

From left to right: Brown, teal blue for the 1/4 oz first sample of fibre; burgundy and violet for the second. I had my doubts about that burgundy; it looked awfully brown. But this is why we swatch. Er, experiment. (Because we all know that swatches are actually lying little liars.)

The tea in the background was not used in the dyeing process.

I forgot to take Before pictures of the fibre in the freshly poured dye, but just imagine the colours you see in the glasses poured onto a faintly off-white fibre. Here’s the brown/teal, after its first trip to the microwave.

Here’s the burgundy/violet, after the first heating. Wow! Check out how drastically different the colour is after only two minutes in the microwave!

Here they are after their requisite heating times, with the dye fully developed.

And here they are, rinsed and dried.

Now, even I can see that the burgundy is deep pink, and the violet is, well, kind of a bright violet. I’m sure a little girl somewhere would love it. The way to tone things down is to mix, or overdye. But I’m pleased with the brown/teal, because it comes closest to what my brain was expecting. I’m going to need to work on deepening that brown, though.

And on that note, I am going to switch laundry then finish proofing the freelance thing.