To Dye For!

Do you remember a few weeks ago a little post called Sneak Peek? If you'd like to take a moment to refresh your memory, I'm happy to post the follow-up - dyeing my own yarn!

What really inspired the idea was when I mistakenly ordered yarn on the internet without having looked at it in the store. I am now all the wiser! While the internet is great for convenience, like times when I can't get to the yarn store before they close, I am definitely a store shopper when it comes to picking out new yarns. Sure, if I am already familiar with the yarn and have simply run out (yes, that has been known to happen from time to time) then re-ordering online is great (although I was also burned by this when the yarn I ordered didn't match exactly as I had hoped).

Sorry, that was a long way of saying that I had extra yarn and nothing to use it for. Since it was a wool blend and cream coloured, it was the perfect  candidate for attempting to dye my own yarn. After a bit of research, I settled on using food colouring, which I already had in my baking cupboard and the only other things I needed were vinegar and a pot full of water. Turns out that food colouring sticks really well if you boil it until the colour in the water has soaked completely into the yarn. The picture above was my attempt at multi-coloured mittens before I felted in the machine.

Check out the before and after shots:

You might remember these mittens; they are the ones I received for Christmas from Diane, the knit, wash, and shrink variety. I thought it would be fun to knit first before dyeing, but I am excited to try dyeing a skein of yarn and then knitting THAT up. That will be a very different result for sure.

The colour of the mittens themselves didn't turn out exactly as I would have liked (I found the colour a little muddled), so I put them back in the pot and just dyed them again to a solid purple. It was more of an experiment anyway, and it gave me some good insight into the process. The question begs to be asked: what to dye next...?