Yarn Dying

With all the wedding celebrations over, now I can focus on more creative things, or creative things that don't involve the wedding.  This weekend I tried my hand at dying yarn.  Tim had bought me a dye kit and yarn at Knit Picks, and I thought I would start with what I thought would be the simplest, kettle dying.  I also wanted to dye all six skeins at the same time, I have plans to make this sweater from the Twist Collective, Fall 2011.  I really want to start it, I even contemplated ripping something else out just to get the yarn to make it.  Tim had originally bought this yarn for me to dye because I was having problems finding yarn with our wedding colours.  I was originally going to make cabled legwarmers, figuring it would be cold in Ireland in April.  I went another direction, and that project was abandoned.  That happened a lot in the months leading up to the wedding, getting a project in mind, getting all ready to start it, then switching to something else.  I blame it on not working and having too much time to think about projects.      


I really liked the colour of the sweater in the picture, so I decided blue was going to be the colour.  The first step is to mix the dye with water, making a dye stock.  I mixed one teaspoon with one cup of boiling water.  Then you soak the yarn in vinegar, then you add yarn, water and the dye stock to the pot and heat it for 30 minuites.  The book I read didn't really say how much dye stock to add, so I added the whole thing.  I figured what could be the worst that happens, it gets really dark.  I was adding all six skeins, so I also thought that it would take a lot of dye to colour that much yarn. 

When I first started reading about dyeing, I though that it sounded like something I would like, a lot of the equipment you need I already had from soap making, like this big pot.  I also had pH strips, so I tested the water, it is supposed to be at 4 pH.  I ran out of vinegar, so I used citric acid, another product I have a lot of for bath bomb making.  I think the yarn turned out pretty well.

I didn't realize how much water is required.  I was supposed to rise it until the water ran clear, but that was taking forever, so I just stopped.  Only a minimal amount of dye was coming out, so I figured I would just be careful washing the sweater later.  If the dye comes off on my hands as I'm knitting it, I will try rinsing it again then.  I have the skeins outside on our balcony on a sweater drier, I'm hoping that the heat of the sun might have an impact.  Probably not, put it's worth a try.  

I liked this project, I will have to get more yarn and try something more complicated, like hand painting in multiple colours.  I can finally get the yarn with our wedding colours.