Finished panel

I painted the panel this morning, using an 0.5% solution of fiber-reactive dyes in various colors.  Here it is:

Here, by way of contrast, is what it looked like before painting:

It’s amazing how much white will “wash out” a color, isn’t it?

Anyway, I am still not happy with this panel.  The top half is okay, but the bottom half looks like a bad dye job.  And the results of my experiment are not encouraging:

What disturbs me here isn’t so much the striping as the consistency of the striping.  It’s very clearly inconsistent throughout the blank – so again, it will tend to look like a mistake, not something intentional.

All of which leads me to conclude that smooth, consistent color transitions are probably the easiest and best way to get consistency.  I have the feeling that minor color inconsistencies will give me interesting color variations anyway – and if there aren’t any, by all the myriad gods, I can put them there via dye painting, silkscreening, embroidery, or what have you.

So there.  (Nyah.)

Tomorrow morning I’m going to a guild meeting, and after that I’ll be headed over to Oakland, where a fellow who repairs knitting machines may sell me a more modern knitting machine to replace my semi-antique one.  Once I get back, I’ll probably use my new-to-me machine to knit another test blank, this time testing a smooth color gradation.  I have to do a test blank anyway to determine gauge on the machine, so might as well test the smooth color gradation while I’m at it!