I got the dye pot out the other afternoon to dye some Organic Merino for some 8ply longies or capris for CJ.
I thought I would post the details here rather than clog the boards over at
Ravelry.
Firts up, I soaked the skeined yarn in a water/vinegar mix for a few hours. I normally do this 50/50 and soak for 1 hour, but I was low on vinegar so soaked longer.
Then came the measurements/quantities. I used Queens food colouring for this, so had to mix the colours.
All the colours I mixed were made from
this colour chart from Queens, except 1 that I made up myself.
For this dye up, one part of colour was 0.2mL measured in a medicine dropper, and once mixed, each colour was mixed with half a cup of water to get the intensity I achieved (this was just a guestimate for strength/intensity- more water will create lighter shades, less water will create darker shades).
For the lighter of the 2 purples (which may be hard to see) I mixed 5 parts Rose Pink with 1/2 part blue (so 1ml Rose Pink: 0.1mL Blue).
I used one portion of colour (the half cup) per colour repeat. ie- each green section was half a cup of colour, each purple half a cup of colour.
To paint the skein, I placed a towell down on the kitchen bench, and covered it in lengths of cling wrap wide enough, and long enough to wrap around the yarn.
I then laced my skeined yarn on the cling wrap in a long straight line, siilar to the one below:
Starting at one end, I slowly poured the colour on and squashed it down with a potato masher to ensure it went all the way though and absorbed into every strand, I then added the nect colour a few cm from the first and squashed it agin until the 2 colours just met. I continued along the length of the skein in no particular order until thw hole thing was coloured as above.
I used tea towells to mop up any excess liquid pressing them lightly along the skein, the warapped the yarn securly in the cling wrap.
I set some water boiling on the stove with a steamer insert for the yarn to sit in, covered, and allowed the yarn to gently steam for about 30-40mins- this may have been overkill, but it was long enough to set all the colour.
After cooling for a while, I rinsed the yarn in warm water (same temp as the yarn at this stage) to ensure there was no excess colour to run/bleed. I then chose to soak the yarn in a lanolin wash to reinvigorate the fibre and help plump it up a bit again.
After the soak I drained the excess water, and rolled the skein in towell to remove futher water,
then hung it up to dry for a few days. Drying time will vary, but being cool and rainy here I had to hang mine in the garage so it took longer than it would have on a mild summers day outdoors.
The above pic is the yarn when almost dry. I will post a photo when I have either reskeined it for storage, or balled it up to show the colour distribution.
Hopefuly this all makes sense and will help someone attemting to dye ool for the first time.
Just be aware that different wools take up the colour differently and can result in variances of vibrancy.
They were sooooooooooo yummy!!!
Yep, so not the best pics ever as I took them myself, but here is a shrug I made myself based on the stitch pattern for the Dream Swatch from THIS post.
