This post is, oh, about a month overdue. But better late than never, right? :-P
So, I got some Fisherman’s Wool. Figured this way I’d have plenty of yarn to experiment with, and get the hang of this thing before trying it with better yarns. And some Wilton icing dyes.
Yarn soup. :-P Presoaking in water and some vinegar.
I mixed the icing dyes with water and a bit of table salt. I did this in small paper cups before pouring them into small squirt bottles. (Yeah, I took this picture near the end of my dyeing spree. :-P) I think I might use a slightly higher proportion of water the next time I try this.
I had teal, royal blue, and violet dyes. I did all three of those colors, then a teal/royal blue and a violet/royal blue mix.
My first hank, pre-nuking. I squirted the dye onto the yarn and worked it through with my fingers.
I used the microwave for this – plastic-wrapped the yarn, nuked it for two minutes, let it sit for two minutes, repeated a couple of times. Here it’s just past its final cycle.
Rinsing in cold water…
After dyeing several hanks, my vinyl gloves turned a fairly bright pink. Interesting.
Hanging to dry in my bathroom. Yes, they’re on hangers. Easier to move them that way, means I didn’t have take over the whole bathroom for too long. (Once they dried enough, I hung them off one of the rails of my loft bed, throwing a couple of ratty towels down to absorb anything that dripped.)
Finished product! Pretty colors, no? Though the teal/green doesn’t photograph so well; it’s much lovelier in person.
Here’s a sample to see how it will knit up.
Things I noticed: I missed a couple of spots here and there, but at least the dye ran enough to get some color in there. Not much – color’s very pale in those spots – but just enough to make sure it’s not completely natural at least. There’s a bit too much red in the violet for my tastes, and the blue’s a bit dark in places, even breaking down to purple-ish hue. It’s a nice color, just darker than I wanted.
Also, I think the water may have been a bit too cold while I was rinsing the yarn, because the yarn was a bit… well, felted, I guess. It’s a bit rough now, more so than before, and strands were slightly stuck together too. Oops. Something to keep in mind for next time, at least.
I just decided to go ahead and dye all that yarn, that way I could make one big project and then never deal with Fisherman’s Wool again. I’m not totally sure what I’m going to make with it yet, though…
As far as new knitting news goes, I hung out with Jess last night, and after getting sushi (mmm, sushi…), I worked on the second sleeve for Shimmer. I’m about halfway through it now. I might actually re-do the first one because I messed up while adjusting the pattern for my short little arms, but no big deal.
Also, Jess gave me some sock yarn, and lent me a set of her size 1 DPNs. She’s planning on submitting a pattern to Knitty, and I basically get to be the guinea pig in testing out her instructions. :-P Should be fun.
I should just keep working on my stash…
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