Monday, January 4, 2016

I did it!

New Year's Eve this year was a day I hope we never have to repeat. Main reason being the area where I live was massively flooded. Worst I have ever seen. Two of our major interstates were closed and needless to say if I had any plans or wanted to head somewhere it was next to impossible to do so.

So what did I do with my New Year's Eve? I dyed yarn. I was itching to try out the dye kit I got for Christmas. I had prepped myself by watching several youtube videos and  looking at some of my Pinterest Boards to get an idea of how things should be done.

I chose to kettle dye the yarn first go around. I thought this would be a fun way to create a lovely tonal yarn. I wanted to choose colors that would blend well together so I went with blue, red, and purple. Depending on where I dropped the colors there would be a nice shift from the red to the blue to the purple.

I gathered all my materials, prepped the yarn, and mixed my dyes. Mixing the dyes proved interesting because there really weren't concrete instructions of what ratios to mix. I started with an 1/8 of teaspoon of dye and 1 oz of water. I didn't want to waste the dye so I thought I'd start off with a small amount.

Everything was moving along beautifully, until I dropped the color into the pot with the yarn.  I hadn't accounted for the fact that a liquid will always run down the side of the vessel it's poured out of when it is poured slowly. I was using small Anchor brand glass bowls. Great for holding things, not so great for precisely dropping color in a kettle.

After I dropped the first color, the idea I had pictured of this cleanly, beautifully dyed skein of yarn was shattered. I dropped the rest of the colors and made the best of it. I used my spatula to stir the bath ever so gently to get the colors to mix and distribute. I also made a mental note to get decent bottles with tips or some type of syringe for next time.

Time elapses, yarn cools, I wash the yarn, and then commences the dying process.  It took a day or two for the yarn to fully dry. I put it outside but it was in the 30's so quick drying wasn't an option.

Overall I wasn't too fond of the skein at first. The colors were a bit too muddied for me and well since it didn't turn out like the picture in my head I was convinced it was a failure.

Now that it's been almost 5 days since everything was said and done, I can say the skein is growning on me and I'm excited to see how it looks like knitted up.  The picture below is the skein both with and without the flash. The flash makes the colors pop more, but the non-flash photo is a more accurate representation of the color.










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