A Day to Dye For

Last Friday I had a little yarn dying party at my house! Sarah and blogless Pierce came over for lesson in using acid dyes. I prefer lanaset dyes and order the Lanaset Dye Kit from Sheep Hollow. But there are many other places to order from as well. I mix up the dyes into a 1% stock solution.

We had a ton of yarn from Knitpicks Dye Your Own line. First the yarn soaks over night in vinegar water so I don't forget to add the vinegar later. I have 3 crock pots for dying, all from thrift stores for <$10. For handpainting, layout same saran wrap and place the yarn in the middle, then go to town. I like experimenting. You control how dark the color is by how much water you add to the 1% stock solution, and a little for a really deep color and a lot for a very light color. If you want pink only use a little bit of red and a lot of water. Then wrap it up in the saran wrap. Then put that into a ziploc bag. Have the crockpots cooking with some water in them and then you can just float the ziploc bag in the water or you can use an upside down colander or some other set-up in the crock pot to keep it out of the water.

I also did the last two pictures showed using vat dying techniques where I put the yarn in the crock pot directly, covered in water and then poured the dye onto different sections of the yarn and let the colors mingle at will. The ones pictured here are just the ones that I dyed. I didn't pictures of Sarah's or Pierce's unfortunately but I think Sarah has some pictures of her on her blog that you can check out too!