Dying Success!

Finally! I managed to get a decent skein of yarn from dying! This time, I took a different approach instead of full immersion. This was my before shot. It's a light blue 85% wool, 15% polyester that I received from my first ever swap! Pretty, but I thought it could be cooler.


So I dunked it in water, and got to work:


While that was soaking, I prepared the dining room table by covering it with newspaper and then laying the saran wrap in a big rectangle to put the very long yarn on top of. I knew I wanted to try to do a hand painted/ self-striping kind of thing. While the water was doing its thing, I mixed up my dyes. Originally I thought I would try for a tonal look with a darker blue and a purple, but once I looked through my koolaid stash I realized that I didn't have grape, but I had a ton of cherry and dark cherry. A plan formed: light blue, dark dark blue, and hopefully purplish with a light red dye and the blue yarn mixing. This plan was foiled when I opened up what I thought was blue dye (because of the package colour) and realized that it was actually red dye. lol

Not to be dissuaded, I changed the plan again! Going back to the stash I grabbed some green and a new idea was hatched: dark red, lt. red, purplish, and green. I mixed 1/2 pack of cherry kool aid with 8 ounces of water, then the other half of that with a bit of dark cherry and 8 oz, and then the green with 8oz, with the plan to leave the other fourth of the skein in it's natural light blue. Here it is in progress:


After the yarn was painted, I wrapped it up tight in the saran wrap and made it in to a kind of cinnamon bun looking thingy and it did a couple of short two minute stints in the microwave. (I would show you the microwave picture, but I didn't notice until I saw the picture on the computer screen how badly our microwave needs to be wiped down!)

And then... outside to dry:


After only a few hours of hanging, I twirled it up in to this:




Taa-Daa! It turned out mostly red, with some lighter and some darker, the green sorta mixed with the red in places to get me a more tonal red/green colour. There is definitely some purple that peeks out and even some pink in places. I love how it contrasts against the startkness of the light blue. It might be destined to be a hat for someone... moi perhaps? We'll see!