A couple people have asked me how I dye.

Now, I hesitate to let the cat out of the bag, but probably not for the reasons most people would expect.

You see, most independent dyers are loathe to make a post like this because their patterns and dyeing methods are all they have to separate them from the scads of other indie dyers out there doing similar work.

But you see, here’s where my real deep, dark, and dirty secret arrives…

I am not those dyers.

I have one trick which I think is uncommon, but that’s because it doesn’t work on a lot of fibers.

I don’t have big secrets of dyeing methodology. I use very basic methods and very basic tricks.

So, how do I get the effects I do?

Easy. I know my fiber and my dye. Really the singular trick to dyeing, whether you want a semi-solid or wildly variegated yarn, is to know your fiber and dye.

This means more than, “I have superwash merino.”

I’ve written before about how I don’t dye scientifically. Perhaps that was a bit disingenuous, because the truth is that while I use dyeing like an impressionist painter’s palette, I cannot (and wouldn’t desire to) escape the fact that I have an academic’s mind.

When I say, “know your fiber” I mean you have to know why things happen like they do. Pick up any introductory dyeing kit or go to one of the dye company pages, head over to knitty and put “dyeing” into the search, and it will give you a set of directions. Great, you can dye now, right?

Wrong. You should, if the directions are well written, be able to reproduce whatever effect (often solids) the directions are written for. Because, if you follow the directions, you are essentially being a machine, there is no understanding.

But what if, instead of leaping in and following the directions, you sat and said, “Huh, why do they say to presoak it? Why do I need to add dawn to the soak?” Then, you’d have understanding of what you were doing, and suddenly you’d not be a machine trying to duplicate a process, you’d be a comprehending artist with the ability to say, “but I want THIS effect so then I should be able to…”

I don’t use fancy tricks. I use very very basic methods, with no fancy ingredients or tools, all in my kitchen, in an oven, one really big canning pot, one medium big heavy stainless pot, and a small stainless pot. Most of my methods use simple resists very much like what you learned at summer camp when you tie dyed a t-shirt.

Because in the end, the real “trick” to dyeing, no matter how fancy the end product, is to know your fiber, know your process, and then to… be creative.

I make the colors I do because that’s what I see in my mind. I could no more describe to you the process by which I look at a wet fiber and say “huh, you know that needs more brown, then it will look much more like the mottle of a sphagnum moss.” than I could describe the reason one rosemary cutting roots while its 10 neighbors just rot off or shrivel up.

That said, I’m going to do a series of posts here about dyeing. I know, I know, I just told you I can’t teach you to dye like me. But see, that’s good! You can dye like you instead! Cool, huh?

So, if you’ve made it this far, you’re probably asking what’s going to be in these posts, right?

As I noted waaaaay up top, before I got all verbose and circuitous, there are a lot of dyeing tutorials out there. Many of them are excellent, so I won’t duplicate them. I will likely link a few, but the actual process of dyeing is not what I’m going to talk about.

I can hear you saying, “Ok, Gnome, so what are you going to talk about? Quit lallygagging and tell us!”

I’m going to talk about the science of dyeing. That is, what things do what, and why. I’m not going to tell you how I do dyeing, I’m going to tell you how i think about dyeing.

Here are some examples, in approximate order:

Dyeing 101: Acid vs Reactive – What’s the Difference between Acid and Reactive Dyes? Direct? What’s that?

Dyeing 101: Animal fibers vs Plant fibers – Protein vs Cellulose and What that Means

Dyeing 101: Fiber Structure – Animal vs Plant Structure

Dyeing 101: Wool Structure – Longwool/Fine wool/Downs wool, Huh?

Dyeing 101: More Structure – Alpaca, Why is it Different? Silk, Why Won’t it Get Wet? Cashmere, Eep?

Dyeing 101: Stuff You Add – Why Detergent? Why am I Soaking it? What’s the Vinegar for? SALT?

Dyeing 101: Things Which Resist – How Pattern Happens

I will try to get to as many of these as possible, they’ll be spaced out as time permits. Because you know I have so very much spare of that.

Also, I am sore. My living room is all reorganized, though not clean yet. I might actually be able to use it. I think I might need to get rid of my spare couch, but I don’t know for sure, or how I’d do it.

That’s it for now.

~The Gnome