50 Shades of Red

Well, maybe not quite fifty, but a lot anyway (33).  I decided that I needed to increase my stash of reds so set up one of my extreme overdyeing sessions with a plan to use my reds and then some of the mixed up reds (mixing different reds together like I did with the blues last month) and then overdyeing.  Well, it looked great on paper.  Biggest problem was that one of the chosen reds was probably 8  years old and didn't have any red left in it and was basically what I would call orange.  Of course I didn't know that until I had washed out the first time.  So I re-planned and did some things differently on the overdye.  I am relatively pleased.  The colors on my computer are pretty true to what I got (maybe a mite more orange).  I actually got some nice Christmas reds in here.

I have now thrown out several containers of dye that were 13 years old!!  If I haven't used them in this long.....  A lot of them had reds in them which seems to be the dyes that have the shortest shelf life (they are the most reactive of the MX dyes so this does make sense!)

This is the sheet so you can see basically what I did for each "cell".  My change of plans was to add Fuchsia to three of the overdye baths (1, 4 and 5).  The three reds I used as my base are Pro Chem's Fuchsia, Mixing Red and Strongest Red (this was the very weak one that red as orange).  I then mixed the Fuchsia and Mixing Red with the Strongest Red for the fourth and fifth columns.  The first row and the first column are the basic colors (no overdyeing).  I overdyed with different concentrations of Pro Chem's Basic Brown, New Black (hadn't used this before and it is a very blue black), and Burnt Orange (this is one of Pro Chem's "pure" dyes).  As I have gotten good rich reds with mixing Strong Orange with Fuchsia before, thought I would try the Burnt Orange this time.    I also used a  mixture of Turquoise and Basic Blue to overdye as well.  The differences in the reds is most noticeable here as the orangey reds definitely looked browner while Fuchsia and Mixing Red looked purpley. 

So now to re-assess and see what else I should dye before heading south!

My  husband and I have our 40th  wedding  anniversary is this week and in celebration our oldest daughter surprised us with  a wonderful surprise trip in September!!  She booked us for two nights in an Edwardian suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City (complete with butler).  We also will be going to High Tea as well!  Since we  usually stay one step above a hostel when we go to NY, this is a very big treat for sure!!  Looks like I will have some place to wear my new jackets after all!