Consistency in mixing custom colors: advice welcome!
I am a new-is home, hobby dyer; i am starting to dye yarn for my own projects and i have a little group of friends we dye together to pool resources. One if the parts of the most is dyeing my own custom colors. I am having trouble, however, getting good reproduceability, and I would like some tips on how I can get better at this.
Example in the picture: Dominican in the middle was supposed to be a base color, a very soft yellow green. The idea was to develop the orange and yellow colorway on the left. I was looking good the sample, but when a mixed dye at larger amounts, I ended up with avocado green, and had to shift gears in the last minute and create the color where you see on the right. What it is very pretty, it is not what I was looking for.
One of the problems I am having is that I was mixing the sample with too small amounts of dye (let’s say 10 cc) and a small change goes a long way, especially since I am not using precision tools to measure. Another problem I can think of is that I don’t have a good way of testing the color as I am mixing in.
I would love any advice on how I can improve my process and develop a reliable custom recipe!