my precious.

I got some new black dye and was fooling around with some dyeing techniques. I was trying to see if I could get silver or grey on the skein without having to overdye. Part of the technique included ignoring the dye manufacturer's instructions and adding citric acid to the dyepot.

The black came out with a strong reddish cast and no silver or gray areas, so I overdyed the skein in purple. I was using 3-ply 100purewool merino, which tends to do this dreadlock kind of thing during dyeing. It can be annoying to reskein, but it also makes the uptake of the dye very irregular, leading to some really neat results.

Behold, a new colorway--Black Pearl. Just in time for the pirate stocking at Venus Vanguard. I love how there are all sorts of shades of purple. I will confess that I've taken it out of its plastic bag just to admire how the purples and lavenders melt into one another. Geek.