Overdyeing - Part 2

After the overdyeing I showed you Monday, I had one more skein in my stash that was planned for overdyeing, but this time, I was going for something completely different.  The Pashmina went from silver to dark periwinkle, but this time I was just adjusting the color just a tiny bit, not completely changing it.

The original skein is Kashmir (Superwash Merino/Cashmere/Nylon) from the Woolen Rabbit in the Oh Ruby colorway.  It has a lot of different reds but they were all warm, orange and brown based reds.  I loved the skein and kept playing with it, thinking it would work for me (fair, cool toned skin), but I knew in my gut that it just wouldn't.  I still wanted it to be red though and I didn't want to lose the lights and darks that were part of the original dye process.  This time around I just needed to overdye it a tiny bit, just enough to tip the red towards the cooler side of the spectrum.  I'd just barely overdye it with a cool red dye (cool red is a magenta type color where warm red is more of an orange based "Chinese red" type color).  If I used too much dye, I'd lose the light/dark variation and could risk taking the color past red and into magenta.  Also, I needed to dump the skein into the dye bath and not mess around with it because the more you stir, the more solid the color tends to be.

I put just enough water into the dyepot to cover the skein, poured in a very weak dye solution, gave it a quick stir and plopped the skein (presoaked) in.  I smooshed the skein down into the water and let it do it's thing.  Not stirring the dye pot is harder than it sounds because I'm naturally a curious person and I want to know what's going on in there.  I did pretty well though with leaving it alone and this is what I ended up with.

I now have a cool, dark red skein of yarn and while the lighter places are darker than they were originally, I still have lights and darks in the skein (they're hard to photograph well, you'll have to take my word for it).  There's something warm and snuggly and Winter-y feeling about the color now even though it's no where near a Christmas red.  It kind of reminds me of dark red plaid flannel things.  Someday, after it's dry, I will knit Vlad with it.  Because warm, snuggly, Winter-y feeling just says vampire, doesn't it?