Dye Day Wrap-Up

I do wool dyeing in my kitchen which means I have to clear out anything edible. I cover my counters with plastic wrap then newspaper.

It is important, and I can’t emphasize this enough, to have dedicated pots, pans and utensils for dyeing. Dyes are quite toxic and you never want to use dyepots for food!
With wool and any other protein fibers, you use acidity and heat. Here is the yarn soaking in water and vinegar.

I also use this stuff called synthropol to help the yarn take the dye better.
After that, I apply the dye. I do a bunch of different techniques (none of which I managed to take a picture of, sorry about that) but they all end up with the yarn wrapped in plastic wrap and then steamed.

Once the dye is set, I rinse the yarn

and take it out to the back fence to dry. You may think the skeins stay all nice and neat during the dye process but a lot of them end up looking like this.

I have my tricks for fixing them but there is generally some foul language involved.

I had a lot of fun dyeing yarn yesterday. I did a bunch of my favorite colors and experimented with several more. Subway Knitter suggested several colors to me and I actually was able to do a couple of them. Both gunmetal gray and raisin came out really well. The picture doesn’t really do them justice.

I tried three times to do a sage and here’s what happened:


Not really,

ah, nope,
and, not even close.
I came to the conclusion that I really needed to buy a dye that specifically says “sage” because I’m obviously unable to mix it.
Look for all the yarn to get posted on Etsy in the next few days. Remember, if you order after June 29, you'll have to wait for me to get back from vacation to mail it to you.