On to the next in the Peacock Fade Set series! Since Part 1 and Part 2 already established the bookends of the Fade Set, it’s time to start worrying about the middle skeins. Because one side is Yellow and Light Green, the next one in the series will be Yellow/Light Green/Green/Blue.

For my base for all of them, I will be using Frida. It’s a 100% Merino Wool Superwash with 16 microns of softness. It’s so super-duper soft, and just touching it during the dyeing process is luscious. It will make the most luxurious sweater.

The skein of Frida soaked for 30 minutes before the dyeing process. I’ve noticed that so much of dyeing is how you place the yarn into the pot. I haven’t tried this placement before, so I was eager to see how it looks. I held onto one end of the hank and lowered the yarn in an open collapsing of yarn.

Which left me with a heap of yarn in my pan. I added quite a lot of water. The yarn was completely submerged and slightly floating.

I applied the yarn in a bullseye pattern starting with the center. Because I am using yellow, I made the middle section way bigger than usual. Yellow is the one color that gets swallowed up by pretty much any other color.

Around the Yellow, I put a thin ring of Light Green. Around that, I put a ring of Green. And then on the edge of the pot, I put a ring of the Blue. (See how the Green is creeping into the Yellow?)

I let the dye exhaust, so the water was clear. Notice how much of the Yellow was eaten up by the Green?

Using the shower ring, I picked up the hank of yarn and was not shocked to see how much bare yarn was present.

I re-collapsed the yarn into the pot with the bare side up.

I repeated the Bullseye Ring dye application and let the dye exhaust. The yarn was cooled to room temperature, rinsed and hung up to dry.

It’s such a lovely marbled watercolory look. I love how the colors flow all over the place. It’s an excellent addition to the fade set.

In the jar, I added a ½ teaspoon of citric acid and 1/8 tsp of the Brilliant Blue dye powder. I don’t know why I added more citric acid. I’m sure I had a reason, but I can’t remember what that reason was.

The yarn had been soaking in water. I wrung out the skein and squished half of it into a jar. I added 1/8 tsp of the Violet dye powder directly onto the yarn. I squished in the rest of the yarn.

Slowly, I added water into the jar until it was up to the brim. I capped it and set it aside.

After a while, I checked on the yarn and I wasn’t happy at all. The color had barely moved. It was going to look awful.

To confirm my fear, I pulled out the yarn to see what was happening. The purple was laying in a blob of color and there was barely any blue. And a whole lot of bare yarn. This would not do!

Taking the yarn out of the jar, I added ½ cup of water and let the blue dye dissolve. Then I squished the yarn back into the jar. With my finger, I made a divot in the top of the yarn and added more purple dye powder.

More water was added to the jar. I also kept poking at the yarn with my finger to help the purple dye move down further.

That’s better! There is at least some color now! I think when using the dry powder, I shouldn’t have wrung out the yarn before I added it. It might work better that way. 

The yarn sat for another hour before hopping into the pot with the other jar from last week. As a reminder, the water was brought up to simmering for 20 minutes. It was cooled overnight in the pot.

I rinsed out the yarn and hung it up to dry. It turned out pretty cool. I’m certainly glad I went back and added more water into the equation. It kept it from being a blob!

I had so much fun with Sadie Fiery Sunset Fade that I wanted to try my hand at another. This time I’m doing a five-part fade set using Yellow-Green-Blue-Purple as my color scheme which I’ll call Peacock. Since I love knitting sweaters, five seems like an excellent skein count.

For my base for all of them, I will be using Frida. It’s a 100% Merino Wool Superwash with 16 microns of softness. It’s so super-duper soft, and just touching it during the dyeing process is luscious. It will make the most luxurious sweater.

I have been wanting to try out jar dyeing. I know a lot of people do this during the summer with solar dyeing, but it’s certainly not warm weather in Washington right now. But I have a workaround!

I soaked a skein of Frida in water for 30 minutes. I put a bit of the Yellow and the Light Green in jars. In the main dyeing jar, I added about an inch of the Light Green.

I pulled the yarn out of the soaking tub and I didn’t wring it out. Then I squished it into the jar.

In retrospect, I wish I had rung out the yarn. There was so much water in the yarn that the jar was nearly completely filled, and it didn’t leave much room for another color. Next time I try a jar method, I will wring out the yarn and then add the water.

I topped off the jar with yellow dye to the very tippy top. Using my gloved finger, I did poke the yarn down as far as it would go to get a bit more yellow dye dispersion. I capped off the jar and it put over to the side to work on the other yarns.

It sat for about 2 hours before it was time to heat set it. I grabbed a pot and filled it with water and put it in the jar (and the purple jar you’ll learn about next week). I took the lids of the jar because I didn’t want the heat to seal the jar or create other reactions like glass jar ruptures/explosions.  I brought the heat up to before simmering and let the jars hang out for 20 minutes. The jars did rattle around a bit in the pan, so I’m glad they weren’t capped.

I let the yarn cool overnight to make sure the dye had plenty of time to exhaust. I plucked it from the jar, rinsed it and hung it up to dry.

I’m happy with how it turned out. There is more white bare yarn than I expected, but that’s okay. Live and learn! And it’s a good start to the Peacock Fade!

I had no plan when I started this colorway. I had an empty fish pan and some leftover Jacquard Acid Dyes. My original goal was something stripy. That didn’t happen. But do I care? No. Why? Because the journey is half the fun!

I’m clearly in the middle of an obsession with Fannie because I’m using that base once again! And what’s not to love about this 100% Superwash Merino Wool?

The yarn was soaked in water before being placed in the fish pan. Water and 1 tsp of citric were added until the yarn was almost submerged. And the fish pan was stretched across two burners. I turned on the heat and brought the temperature to right before simmering.

In a condiment squirt bottle, I filled them with leftover Jacquard Acid Dyes. There are a blue and a purple bottle. Using the bottle, I added the dye.

First, I placed stripes of purple dye at regular intervals.

Second, I place the blue dye also at regular intervals.

I’m going to be honest. I wasn’t loving the stripes. It was a bit boring and bland for me. Using a prong, I squished the yarn around and that helped the dye disperse.

I left the dye exhaust. The yarn has gotten fairly evenly coated, but the color still seemed a bit anemic.

Using the handy dandy shower ring, I picked up the yarn and added dye directly to the water. I used both purple and blue.

And the dye exhausted. Nothing left to do but rinse it and hang it up to dry. 

It’s a really nice tonal. Certainly not one of the more exciting yarns that I have created, but still an excellent staple yarn. Or pair it with a more exciting yarn. I’ll put it in the win category.

It’s a really nice tonal. Certainly not one of the more exciting yarns that I have created, but still an excellent staple yarn. Or pair it with a more exciting yarn. I’ll put it in the win category.