Sherri Woodard Coffey

Tangled skeins are what I’m dealing with

In the process of prepping the skeins for dyeing, they were soaked in the washer with Synthropol. When it came time to actually do the dyeing, I turned the dial to spin, or at least I thought I did. It took me a few minutes to realize that the washer sounded all wrong. Turns out that I had moved the dial to rinse and these yarns were being agitated. And oh what a mess of tangled yarns.

While balling up many tangled skeins of yarn–and tangled yarns take a really long time to ball–I suddenly realized that I could demonstrate the red and green filters.

These aren’t good pictures, but the idea is shown. Above are the yarns in their natural state. On the left are shown the two filters. It’s probably obvious which is which.

Below are some greenish/blue/turquoise yarns, even though they don’t look like it in this picture. Even farther down are pictures showing the same yarns with the green and red filters. In theory, these filters are supposed to “remove color”, making it easier to see value among the yarns. The instructions say that for most people, the red filter is best. However, if you are looking at reds, switching to the green filter may be better. And the reverse–looking at greens, the red filter may work best. You be the judge. I think you can also do the same thing with a black and white photo.