On dyeing . . .

My SP9 partner sent me 5 skeins of KnitPicks Bare back in the day and I received the starter set of Jacquard Acid dyes for Christmas. I was initially putting off dyeing in an effort to not accidentally dye up a house I was trying to sell. Earlier this week I decided to risk it.

I am obsessed with the Chevron Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Ravelry is not helping this obsession, but instead enabling it. However, I got major sticker shock at the idea of buying $48 worth of Koigu to knit it!! This is Florida, I may be able to wear this scarf for 5 minutes, late at night in Mid-February. Maybe. I only spend $3.50 on my daily foot apparel, I'm not going to spend that much on something I can practically never wear.

But I am in love with this scarf. I love it like a fat kid loves chocolate and since I am that kid too, I know that this is a deep, deep love.

So inspired by the Alice I thought, why not dye my own?? And so I spent Monday dyeing and not knitting.

I dutifully soaked my yarn for an hour. Then spun it "dry" in the washing machine.

And after mixing up my dye and boiling and simmering and stinking up the house with vinegar-y smells, I hung my yarn out to dry.





This morning I caked it up. I've named it Rastafari.

Some things to note, this is not at all how I intended this yarn to look. See that crazy Christmas-y green?? It's supposed to be blue, but apparently there was yellow left in the pot - completely undetectable until it turned all my blue to green. And the red is a lot darker than I intended, these things are all my fault.

The directions said that 1 tsp. of dye would dye 100g of yarn, and that's exactly what I mixed together. The problem was that each skein is 100g and each color was only going on 1/3 of that skein. Result, dark dye. While I'm pleased to report it's not too light, this is again not what I intended.

Also, with the overlaps, I should have ended up with a pretty rainbow of colors. I used Red, Yellow and Blue dye, hoping for Green, Purple and Orange overlaps. I think the darkness of the dye canceled that result as well.

I think I'm going to try again, this time mixing the dyes a little lighter and using the squirt bottle technique. I can't use this yarn for the Chevron scarf I'm imagining, maybe I'll knit some socks. Two pairs of Rastafari socks . . .