More dye

 

This is a brick of yarn. It came in a bag with a really nice, tangle free winding style which I have never seen in any yarn besides Lang Bebe. It is always a shame to work with this yarn after it has been removed from the bag because it is so much more tedious to work with a ball or even a center pull skein.  

The smooth pull of this yarn was sacrificed in order for it to be usable. All of our Lang yarn is from the 80s, and a lot of it falls into the category of frilly Victorian postmodern colors. Along with navy, red, teal and periwinkle, this color yellow was used to make machine knits for kids in the early 90s. I am convinced that there is no color more terrible for clothing. The picture does not quite capture it's unfortunate hue. It is a bit paler, and would only make decent clothing for a baby, or a darker skinned person under the age of 13. Even on someone dark, it isn't a great yellow.

Swatches were taken to find a dye color that will really work with his heathered red. I am not really into the idea of buying acid dyes when there is food coloring in the cabinet. I would consider it if I had white yarn to work from, but the yellow makes colors a bit trickier. I'm looking for a minty color. 

You can see that the closes to mint is light green at the top, made by adding only blue. The yellow it all from the pre dyed color. The ugliest but most intriguing color was that brown, made with blue and yellow dye. Something about the combination clashed in the dyebath and the yarn did not pick up much blue color. My favorite picks right now are the first and last colors. Not sure which is best yet, but both are a lot better than the original.