Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Well That Was Fun!

So this weekend, I had some lovely time to myself. Waking up to only to a dog who doesn't get up for a full hour after you do is a delicious thing. I also got to spend some time doing fibery things with our Zonda. She took all the good pictures, so go stalk her blog.

While I was enjoying the silence, I decided to play with some nekkid yarn and food coloring. Wilton's to be exact!

Using this fabulous article from Knitty as a reference, I heated up the crock pot, threw in some vinegar and had at it.

Here is a pre rinse pic:

And here is the end product!



I only used two colors - blue and green. I started out by pouring in the blue, then hitting the spots that were still light with the green. Initially, I had twisted the yarn a bit, and ended up with more white than I intended. Once the yarn had cooled off so I could examine it, it went back to the crock pot. I added more blue and just a snitch more green, which exhausted pretty quickly leaving still more white than I wanted. I quickly made up some blue dye, and then added a wee bit of green making a neat teal color. I dumped it in and called it a day.

I love it, and I learned some lessons.

1. It's fun to play with vinegar. For the green, I had secretly poured vinegar right where I wanted the color to go. I can say it worked, and worked well.

2. If the water is still hot, you can add more dye.

3. Next time, use the oval crock pot. The second go-round, I just put the yarn in, with no arrangement and had a lot less white, however, it was still tricky to get the dye into all of the nooks and crannies. Using my oval crock pot will allow a lot more room for play.

4. Dyeing yarn is just like any other fiber related play. Addictive.

Here's a sneak peak of another addiction.


And just in the event you needed an interesting factoid, today is the day, back in the 50's that LSD was deemed illegal.

3 comments:

Zonda said...

ooh it is pretty! hehe..yeah, all pictures of you, that I haven't posted yet ;)

Cookie said...

Very nice!

Next time, you need to dye roving that you can spin into yarn and knit with. That's your circle of life. ;^)

xo

Opal said...

love love love the yarn.

also love what you've got going on the bobbin AND i think cookie's right. get some roving to dye!