Dyeing experiment 2

So having found some advice online here on the subject of dyeing (in fact the knitty.com website is a great source of info on everything yarnish) we had a much more successful experiment.
So we started with soaking the yarn in the fixative solution, this was made with 1 gallon hot water, one cup of washing soda and 8oz salt (we do have very hard water here but this was a guess).

Then I mixed up some fresh dye, 2 teaspoons to about 250ml of warm water:

Then after soaking the yarn for about 20 minutes we squeezed the excess liquid out (you can reuse this solution indefinitely, so we have kept the bucketful in the garage) we laid it out on plastic sheeting (cut open bin liner) ready for the dye.

Then we applied the dye, this first one is mine, which is 100g of 100% wool yarn, then the one below is Tish's which is 100g of banana yarn.

When the dyeing is all done you wrap it up in plastic to keep it moist. We used cling film to keep the different coloured bits separate but you can just pop it in a plastic bag.

It sat in the hot cupboard (this is where the hot water tank is) for 24 hours (or whatever, it was a bit more than that. It can be less if you want paler colours). Then you rinse in cold water until it loses no more colour. You need to be thorough to get rid of all the fixative solution which will degrade the fibre. Then we washed through gently with some 'delicates' washing liquid.
And we are pretty pleased with the result. Having both used the same colours (except the turquoise which I did not use) it shows what different effects you can get. (If you click on the photo you can see the lovely colours a bit better.)