Guess what I am doing Right Now.


You'll never guess.


Barbara, et al, I am DYEING! Aunt Karen gave me a whole whack of lovely yarn for Christmas and my birthday and I have been doing nothing with it since then. I think I was waiting for the heavens to open and show me the way. Then along came Barbara.

And what did I hear but that of course I could use Easter egg dye and don't be silly food safe coloring won't hurt your cookware and that was it for me.

I'm still nervous about ratios of fiber to dye stuff. All the instructions I've seen are for dry weights of both and I'm using the liquid food coloring that we always used for dyeing eggs when I was growing up. But how on Earth will I ever learn if I don't go ahead and experiment? Reading about the process isn't going to get me pretty homedyed yarn.

So I've guesstimated. I used a teaspoon of vinegar to each half cup of water I put into the pot for acid to set the dye. There are 10 cups of water in the dye pot, but that's just to keep the yarn wet and aid the absorbtion of the the color. I could have used more or less water depending on how deep I needed it.

The yarn I'm dying is some of my first wool handspun and a skein of superwash Bare sock yarn from Knit Picks that Aunt Karen sent me. I'm shooting for a springy yellow green, with a mottled kettle dyed effect to vary the color slightly. 30 drops of green and to balance the blue undertone I noticed when I was coloring eggs, I added about 10 drops of yellow. I'll leave the yarn as it lays in the pot on the stove top and not turn it or fiddle with it. I hope that will encourage a slight variation in the color that will add depth to a finished knit.

It's fun to think about the blank yarn as what I'd like it to be eventually and choose coloring that will compliment that goal. I've got another skein of sock yarn, two of a fingering weight pure wool, and three skeins of Cascade 220.


Update- The dyebath has exhausted and the color is bright. Gonna let it cool down and the rinse in the sink and see what we got!