In the pot, part 2

The bath has cleared, the water has been rinsed, and the yarn has (finally!) dried - check it out!

Although it's still not quite all the way there, I'm well pleased with how this round of dyeing went :D MUCH better than previously, and I pretty much owe 85% of that to my husband, who got me a PH meter for Christmas. Being able to accurately measure our PH means that I can actually get my acid levels correct, which makes the dye uptake much better. The orange yarn didn't clear the bath completely, so the yarn didn't take up ALL the dye, but the purple/red/pink one pretty much took up every ounce and I was incredibly pleased with that. I tried for a black to red combo and got more of a purple to pink, which isn't awful. I also tried for speckles and didn't really like the way it went when I tried the "dry dye" method. The orange variegation came from having the orange take up really well but then stay a little too vibrant - I threw on some improvised brown and it eased up to more of a "pumpkin pie" than "pumpkin," which I love.

Overall, I have a few lessons learnt here:
- It won't be consistent until I can use hotel pans (those big rectangular pans that allow the yarn to lie flat)
- This yarn still takes up the dye fairly evenly; this is a great characteristic UNLESS you're actually looking for tonal variation, which is then really challenging to achieve
- I should probably try speckles using the ol' "paintbrush" technique like we used to do in art class. I'm a little terrified it'll go all over the walls, but maybe I can be careful...haha!

I have two bare skeins left so maybe I can try my speckles on them. I also have a pile of "tonal" green that's quite bland; I think it wants overdyeing, so we'll see what I can get up to with those ones. So far, so good!