Colour obsession

G'day all!

Here's an interesting one for you.

Colour. Another of my obsessions.

This is what happened when I pot-dyed some red, yellow and blue in one hit.

Dang, the water was a bit too hot so I didn't get good mixing. However, can you see the result is really different to what happens with yellow, cyan and magenta?


DH explains it like this. Red, yellow and blue are pigment dyes. They are pure colours (well I tried to get at close to pure dyes as I can but they are nearly always blends). When you mix them you get mud. See how the blue and red mix to make a dull purple? The yellow and blue mix to make fairly dull greens?

(Hand-dyed, hand-spun, hand-knitted not quite Fetching mitts show the colours off well)

Yellow, cyan and magenta are used in the magazine industry to make coloured pages (along with black, and now they have at least six colours they use, but same diff). Yellow is visible light without blue. Cyan is light without magenta. Magenta is light without yellow. In other words, these colours are blends. When you mix them, you get both them and the colours that are missing until they are mixed. So yellow and magenta make red ( a beautiful pure red too). Cyan and yellow make green. Magenta and cyan make magnificent purples and blues. Different amounts of each of these colours make a whole rainbow of colours - lovely oranges and corals, fascinating greens and turquoises, brilliant mauves and purples and blues. (I'll still need ot use some of the primaries on occaison though, like a true blue is not easy to get.) All mixed together they technically make black but in my experience they just go muddy. You can read more about this on Wikipedia.

So I can see the attraction of using red, yellow and blue but I prefer cyan, magenta and yellow. I can get colours I like more easily. Even if in a test sock used to sop up some excess dye (and test a new yarn for sock making) I have made a multicoloured pooling horror:

:-) (Don't you love the teensy foot in the background? It is mine!)

A cat funny moment. Fireworks for Vietnamese New Year (we have lots of Vietnamese immigrants around here). The cats both ran around the house looking for somewhere to hide. Cheshire ended up choosing under the piano stool (a favoured place to sleep) and half an hour after the fireworks ended, Nutmeg crawled out from under an occasional table in the loungeroom (if it is only occasionally a table, what is it otherwise? ;-). Apparently being near one's humans is the safest place to be!

Another funny cat moment. The cats love chasing moths and flies. We get both here. Often the moth or fly is very small and we get treated to the sight of a cat launching itself a metre into the air over and over or scrabbling along the carpet jumping on something, all to catch an invisible something. It's like those people who wander down the streeet talking loudly to themselves, and then you notice the earbud - they are on the mobile phone.

Finally, we keep water in a container in the bath for the cats since they used to drink from the horrid yucky abominable drain.

Need I say more?

anon!