Hand Dyed Yarn!

Suffice it to say I feel a bit foolish after yesterday's somewhat sappy and romantic post. Yes, Fenway is a beauty, but that game was butt-ugly after Mr. Gagne made his appearance.

Moving on to actual beautiful things, I will share with you pictures of my first yarn-dying adventure. Thanks go to my knitting addicted but blogless friend Cheryl who did all the preparation and organizing. She magically transformed her massive garage into a lovely yarn dying studio.

First we mixed up the dyes and soaked our yarn. After the yarn bloomed, we jumped right into the painting. I was having so much with the whole thing, that I didn't stop to take photos until is was all wrapped and ready for steaming.

Here is Cheryl warping her yarn in preparation of dying it in a self-striping pattern. Cheryl made the warping board herself, using directions provided by Scout. The yarn is Trekking Natural from Carodan Farms. The dyes are Jacquard Acid Dyes from Knit Picks.

You can see her hand-painted variegated wrapped and ready for the steaming too.

Here our creations are put into the steamer. And steam they did. About 20 minutes into the process, Cheryl's husband noticed the smell of steamy wool (very stinky!) and came to alert us of the mess we were making in the kitchen. Nothing major really, just a lot of water. We turned down the heat and let the yarn cook for another 20 minutes or so.

We rinsed it well with cold water.

And admired the very vivid colors.

And hung our masterpieces up to dry.

I didn't get a picture of the completed self-striping yarn, but hopefully can show you the finished product in a later post.

This was a fun, fun afternoon! And before I forget, special thanks to Sarge, who supervised all of our activities. He is such a good boy!