Dye Testing: Brand 2 Results

The results are in for Brand #2 dyes! I have to say, things didn't start out too well for this brand. For the life of me, I couldn't get the yellow dye to mix with the water to make a solution. I tried all of the tricks I know, but I still couldn't get the powder blobs to make friends with the water. Even after letting it settle for a day, it continued to refuse to play nice. So, I wasn't able to dye with this powder. The red, blue, and black worked just fine, and had decent coverage just like Brand #1 did. It still didn't dye the merino as well as I wanted it to, but I'll talk about the differences when I finish Brand #3 (I've only just started on those).

Here we go, red, blue, and black:

For the sake of consistency, I dyed the same kind of fibers for each color: merino, silk noil, icicle nylon, faux cashmere (nylon). Without any additions to make the dye take more evenly, this brand dyed very evenly. It dyed the icicle nylon and merino the best, even if the merino doesn't look as saturated as the rest.

I really like the blue from this brand. It's very different than the Brand #1 blue, which is more stereotypical of primary blue. Brand #2 blue has a wonderful Caribbean vibe, and I think it has a lot of potential as a primary color. The red and black turned out very similarly to Brand #1, so nothing too interesting there.

For me, this brand of dyes is like comparing bing cherries to rainier cherries--both are delicious, but one is slightly sweeter than the other. I eat both kinds of cherries with a voracious appetite--go ahead, ask me how long it takes for me to eat 5kg of cherries--and I can't really choose if both are available to me. Those are the days when I buy both. :) So, I'm kind of torn with these two brands so far. Brand #1's black was horrible, and so was Brand #2's yellow. I kind of want to meld these two brands into one so I can be the epitome of happy.

Brand #3 is in the process of being tested, and so far I kind of like the idea of it being able to dye both protein and cellulose fibers. For those of you Facebook fans who have already gotten a preview picture of Brand #3's yellow, you know that I'm a little confused how this dye works for both types of fiber. Well, I guess it's time to get out the dyepot...