As we’re coming up to Easter, Easter Egg dyes are back in the stores and I plan to lay in a serious stock of them before they disappear.  I have discovered, however, that all brands are not created equally.

Until now, I have been using PAAS tablet dyes and they have worked very well for me in all colors and color combinations.  This year I noticed another brand on the shelves - a slightly less expensive one - and since I like to save money as much as the next person, I checked it out.  A close reading of the directions on the box indicated that while vinegar should be used to dissolve the tablets for the brightest, most vibrant color, the red/pink (and sometimes violet) tablets should only be dissolved in water.  From previous experience with red pigments, I take this to mean the vinegar will neutralize most or all of the red tones.  For me, that makes this unsuitable for use as yarn dye.  The PAAS dyes all worked perfectly with vinegar, even the reds.

However, there was also some Easter Egg dye, packaged exclusively for Wal-Mart, that didn’t include that caveat.  Reading down the list of colors, I could see that the names were exactly the same as those of the PAAS colors (for example: Denim for blue) and conjectured that PAAS was doing a special packaging for WalMart corporation.  If these were the same dyes, they would be fine to use (all colors, even with vinegar) and they were much less expensive - about half the price of the regular PAAS dyeing kits.

I bought a few to try out.  Of course I homed in on the reds because if there was going to be a problem, that’s where it would be.  The result was this:

This is Gypsy Rose and you can see the whole entry over at The Dye Pot.

I imagine a lot of the expense of the kits comes from the decorations usually included in the box - stickers, stands, various and sundry borders and so forth.  I would be absolutely thrilled if they would offer a straight packet of dye tablets with none of the other stuff included.

Though I have to admit, I did succumb to playing with the stickers:

I ripped the sock from Wednesday’s post because I just couldn’t work at sock gauge with the dark yarn.  IT will get saved for something else - likely something worked on larger needles :)  But I did re-start the socks in a yarn I could actually see to work with - Ibis.

I also went down a needle size, from 3s to 2s and the diameter is much better.  This isn’t a tight pattern and it has quite a bit of give in it so I didn’t want it to be too loose.  It is stretched a bit over the end of Myria’s DS case in the picture, to give you a better look at the pattern.  I hope to finish the first one this weekend.

We will both be nursing horrendous colds this weekend - oh joy :)  My sinuses have declared a state of emergency and poor Myria’s voice has fled for the hills.  So likely we will be staying put, staying warm and trying not to cough on each other too much!  Thank heavens for soup and soda crackers…

Have a good one :)