Playing in the Dyepot

I am a happy knitter this morning: I finally finished my first I Love Gansey sock from the Six Sox Knitalong Yahoo! group, and it turned out pretty good. There are a couple of things that need tweaking, and I’m seriously thinking about doing just that on the second sock. That would mean that the two socks won’t be identical, but who’s going to know but me? For reasons I will reveal later in the post, I have decided NOT to give these socks to my friend Mel. Don’t worry, she is going to get some socks, just not these. Here is a pic of the finished ILG:

As you might have guessed from the title of this post, I have been playing around with dyeing yarn. What you have to understand is that I am a complete novice at yarn dyeing, but when life hands you ugly yarn, what else can you do? The picture on the left is what I did yesterday. The small ball of gold yarn is the original color, and yes, it is the same yarn I used to knit the ILG sock above. You may remember that I stated I have several skeins of this yarn. The two balls of variegated brown in the middle were dyed using red, green and yellow food coloring. You heard me right: food coloring! I figured if it works on eggs it will probably work on wool and I was right. I wasn’t necessarily going for a variegated color, but there was too much yarn for the amount of ‘dye’ I had in the pot. I dyed 2 skeins at the same time and had to add more dye twice while the yarn was in the pot to get it to this color. Since this was all experimental and I don’t plan on trying to repeat the colors, I did not measure the amount of food coloring nor take notes on the process. It was a true ‘fly by the seat of my pants’ effort. The green ball to the far left is two skeins wound together and was dyed using green, blue and just a couple of drops of red to tone it down. The yarn took the green dye better and is more consistent although there are places where the yarn is lighter or darker. It’s not perfect, but I’m pretty satisfied with the results.

The picture on the right is from my first dyeing attempt a few weeks ago. As you can see, the yarn started out white. The teal color was done with blue and green food coloring, and the neon yellow came from yellow, green and a few drops of blue. I have three more skeins of this white yarn that I plan on dyeing in some more bright intense colors and then using them all together to practice my fair isle technique.

 

Now that you’ve seen what a complete newbie can do with a little dye, some yarn and a ‘go for it’ attitude, let me show you the results of someone who has mastered the process. This absolutely gorgeous yarn came from Deb Kessler’s Etsy shop, Fearless Fibers. There are 550 yards of 100% superwash Merino wool hand-dyed yarn in this skein and this, my friends, is going to become the socks for my best pal gal Mel! I knew as soon as I saw it that it would make perfect socks for her with enough yardage left over for a matching pair for her new baby girl. The price was very reasonable for the amount of yardage, so if you’re looking for some beautiful hand-dyed yarn, please check out Deb’s shop; you won’t be disappointed.

Tags: Knitting, Socks, Dyeing, I+Love+Gansey