? stuck in my head

[Valerie77]

does anyone know how varigated yarn is dyed?? ive wondered this forever!

[Valerie77]

ha ha...i forgot i posted this...

 

does anyone know?

[Aggie May]

There are different types of variagated yarns.

One, the yarn is formed into a long skein and parts of the skein are dipped into the dye at different times. This means that there are reasonably long bits of each colour and when it is knitted, you get a pattern forming as you go.

There is also a version where a third of each ball are dyed different colours and when knitted you get wide stripes and the colours blurr into each other.

The one I sold in my shop years ago was called Changes and was very popular.

Then you get the type which comes out marled and that is just much smaller bits of colour repeated over the ball. These can look great in the ball but sometimes do not look so good knitted or crocheted.

If you are spinning, you can ply two colours together and this can also look nice made up, especially if you use it with a plain colour in the same shade.

A lot of this sort of stuff is taken for granted because that is just how it is and we dont stop to think about how it is done.

There will be lots of other ways it can be done too so it will be good to keep an eye on this thread.

Have fun.

Colleen.

[jacqui]

when i dyed my own we had strips of wool from the mill called Tops (roving) you made a s shape and pulled it close together and painted the dyein stripes across it changing colors as you pleased.We rolled them up in plastic wrap and nuked these sausages of wool (100 grams each)for 4 minutes cooled and rinsed them. We then had a line full of multi colored strips of wool to dry. Then it depends on how you spin it and ply it as to the pattern the varigation ends up looking like.

[Valerie77]

hmm!! very interesting! thanks aggie may and jacqui!