A days work for color

So I got bit with the artistic bug. I had to do something different, new, and creative. I decided to try my hand at dying yarn, Easter egg style. Here's the account of my weekend's adventures.

I started with several kinds of wool  yarn. From what I have gathered reading on the Internet, wool yarn is easily dyed with things like Easter egg dye and kool aid, but natural fibers like cotton needs something a bit stronger. I followed a tutorial I found online (Kathryn Ivy) until my book arrived, I suggest reading it if you're going to dye yarn, this is just quick notes of my adventures.

First I took my 2 different kinds of Peruvian wool (100% wool) and unwound them into hanks. I started trying to use my yarn swift, but that wasn't the easiest thing, so I switched to a two wine bottle method. Worked much faster and much much easier.

Since I moved my yarn to the floor with the bottle method, I got lots of kitty help from Lilu. Mostly she just wanted to sit next to me and get petted every now and then, but of course, cats and yarn, especially moving yarn....well she had to grab it from time to time. Was really amusing, and of course there is always time for kitty yoga while knitting too.

After all of that work, I hung up my white yarn on the drying rack (even though it wasn't wet yet) just to get a picture of what I had, plus it was a good time to get things cleaned up and organized before the next big stage...actual dying.

This stage involved cutting up a trash bag and putting it on my counter, mixing up some Easter egg dyes, and filling my sink with vinegar and cold water. The first step is to prepare the yarn, so it was soaked in vinegar water for an hour, then its ready to accept some new colors! I was amazed at how clean everything ended up being, there wasn't much in the way of "shoot I got that everywhere" which made me really happy. Plus it will give me confidence when I go to the chemical cotton dyes which WILL stain everything, unlike the Easter egg dye that's designed for children to mess around with.


After the color is added to the yarn, it gets thrown on the stove to get stemmed. I have a collider resting on top of the pot and the yarn goes in there. It gets steamed for 30 min. I thought I was going to be behind on my coloring, but no. I managed to color almost everything while waiting for the first few to get steamed. It gave me time to do some actual knitting and cleaning while I was dying yarn. The hot yarn then gets taken out and put in a sink to cool, once its cool, you put it in warmer than the yarn itself water and makesure the color doesn't run. Add some wool wash to keep everything nice and soft (and get rid of that vinegar smell) and the drying process starts!

After all was said and done I refilled my rack with beautifully colored yarn. The one thing I didn't care for, and I'm not sure how easy it is to correct, is that the yarn seemed to always be a bit pastel. You couldn't get a really vibrant big bold color, it will be muted a bit. (And the colors in the water are much brighter than when they are dried) But I'm happy with the colors I got and I'm excited to see what other adventures I might have. I went back to Target to get some more Easter egg dye, got lots of different color options. Neon, some actual greens, a brown, lots of variation. So I'm looking forward to it next time. I have some more ideas on getting really creative. I don't have much more white wool left in my possession, but maybe next weekend or the following there will be some more snow (like today!) and I'll get back to dying. In the mean time, it took a full day to get this all done. Would have been faster if I had made my hanks the day before, but still enjoyable, creative and a fun way to spend the afternoon!