The Sun's Out But I'm Still Dying

My first post with my dying attempts explained that it was something to do when it was raining. There was just one thing I didn't realise - dying is addictive. There were three more dying ideas I wanted to try - something to go with the bright colours from the first round of Kool-Aid dying, gradient dying and dying sock yarn. This post will show the results from the first and third of these.

Firstly I needed yarn. So off to Michael's and I bought a ball of Paton's Classic Wool and a ball of Stash Nation Full O' Sheep; the two yarns I had used in my initial attempts. But they didn't have any natural colour sock yarn and then I remembered I had yarn left over from these socks.

The sock yarn. I decided on striping yarn in three colours. Two Kool-Aid and one Wilton's icing so I soaked the yarn in vinegar solution. As Paton's Kroy comes in 50 gram balls I had two small balls left. I wound them together around two trusty chairs to make 1 hank. I should have made a note as I cannot remember how I decided how long to make the hank. After soaking the hank was laid out on cling film. I made up Orange Kool-Aid, Ice Blue (Raspberry Lemonade) Kool-Aid and Teal Wilton's in 1/4 cup of water.



Also I didn't squeeze all the water out of the yarn. This time I didn't want the spread of the colour to be decided by how much water I added after. I aimed for 1/3 of the yarn in each colour but it looks as if there was slightly less of the teal.



The yarn was wrapped in the cling film, put in a dish and microwaved until the water was clear.



The final result after the yarn has been split into two skeins.



While this was going on the Classic Wool was soaking in vinegar solution. What I had originally wanted was not what I ended up with but I am very happy with the end result.

Before soaking the wool had to be wound into a hank. The measurements were easy for this. I roughly measured my kitchen work top and placed the chairs slightly less than that distance apart. I chose Wilton's icing colours in black and copper. I wasn't sure how the black was going to come out as one blog said the colours broke like a bruise; as I did not want a variegated yarn I added a little of Wilton's brown. The dye mix was very green and you can see how green it is in this photo after I've added the dyes to the yarn - roughly half of the hank each. Those lines across? They're left over teal. I wondered how that would come out. Answer not at all.



This is how the yarn came out. Brown with green undertones.



A good example of how you cannot rely on the dye pot or the unheated yarn for your end result.