Here are some pictures of fiber in my dye pot. I’m using an old crock pot as my dye pot. We bought a new crock pot with a removable crock – a great convenience for serving and washing – and the old one got converted to a dye pot.

The dye I’m currently playing with is Dudley’s Dip-an-Egg egg decorating kit. The directions for dyeing eggs say that for pastel eggs, you should dissolve the dye tablets in water. For bright eggs, they suggest using water plus lemon juice and for ultra bright eggs, they suggest water and vinegar.

I’m using water and vinegar.



The directions also say that for the pink tablet – the one that produces the pink/red color – to use water only regardless of the desired color intensity. I used vinegar with this dye, too. Next time, I guess I’ll try ordinary water with the dye. I can always add vinegar to the dye pot. What I’ve discovered so far is that vinegar seems to precipitate much of the dye from solution so the bath looks exhausted. However, as the fiber cooks in the bath, the little bit of dye in solution is absorbed by the fiber and new dye continuously goes into solution to replace that absorbed by the fiber. The dye bath never looks strong enough to produce the strong pink color (seen in the top left corner of the picture in the April 17 entry).

I wonder what would happen if I only used water.