So… ice dying, right? So I loved the look of the scarves I did last week:

First attempt. Should have just left it alone…

But once I put one on to wear it read as really subtle since you lost the marbled look with it scrunched up around the neck… and my husband said the couple of light tan spots read as looking dirty… so okay, I’ll just over dye those spots in red with a poly dye for synthetic fabric.

So yeah, I totally spilled a glom on that one spot…

But… it didn’t take. Just gave a blah light pink diffusion over spots… so that sucks. Okay, so then I overdyed and went heavy with it the next day with the red dye for cotton fabrics.

On the grass this time for greater control. I still spilled it. Also added more blue and black to make it less murder-y

And… it still didn’t take. I even used the dye activator liquid that came with the dye, and salt… it’s a bit of a mess. I rinsed the one on the left in the picture above out after 2 hours, I’m going to let the one on the right stay out there longer and hope the cat doesn’t walk on it and the dog doesn’t pee on it. This is asking a lot of fate, I know.

I sure as hell hope it’s either just the particular fabric on these scarves or the red dye color from both types. Because 30  scarves that look like this ain’t gonna cut it, methinks.

At least the salt is helping the black to take… so there’s that. It isn’t a mistake if you learn something, RIGHT?

I’m just going to chalk it up to a learning curve… like the first pancake that never turns out right.

One other thing- it’s disappointing to see that now that I have all this poly dye, it’s stating that it really needs to be heated to set… as in boiling the fabric with the dye. Well, that is just not going to be possible here. Now, the poly blue took well enough without it… but that poly red sure is a mess. I’m just going to do a test on the next few scarves of all the dyes in stripes to test the colors and see what I can work with- since the poly red and blue reacted so differently, and the natural fiber black and red took so differently I really just need to see them all in action. Watch it be the first one to sell…