To Dye For

I am chalking my first dying experience as a loss. I didn't concentrate enough on technique and the exact colors I wanted and came up with something I am not too thrilled with in the end. But, it was fun and I know things that I am going to change for next time... Notice I say next time!!

First off, I used Diana's technique for self-striping yarn in that I wound a really long hank using chairs spread about 14 feet apart. I tied off three sections and soaked in water for about 30 minutes. In terms of hand-painting the stripes, I used Knitty's guide and sort of just dipped each section into the dye. I put the entire hank in a steamer over hot water and let it steam for about 40 minutes. Periodically, I redipped the yarn. I also made a tin foil contraption to keep the color sections seperate in the steamer (note that this didn't work perfectly). I didn't use the jars like Diana did since I didn't have any lying around. The colors I chose for dye job number 1 were orange, yellow and blue... and, yes, I did get orange, yellow, and purple! For the orange I used 3 Orange and 1 Cherry; the yellow I used 3 Lemonade; and the blue I used 3 Raspberry Blue and 1 Grape (the grape is where it went all wrong).

As you can see from the pictures below, my orange was neon and my blue was purple. It actually looks kind of like a Paper Source bag if you know what I mean!




So, I decided to re-dye. Dye job number two involved a second soak and the use of jars that I acually realized I had at work (duh, I am a scientist)! This technique worked much better and I highly recommend it to anyone that is trying to create self-striping yarn. All you need to do is put the sections in the appropriate colors and put all the jars in one hot water bath until the water in the jars is cloudy or clear!

For this dye I used 3 Cherry packets for the orange section, 3 lemonade packets to brighten up the yellow, and 2 Raspberry Reaction and 3 Changing Cherry for the purple. So, I ended up with these distorted primary colors in the end....




If anyone has made it through this long post and is interested in creating some socks with this yarn, let me know! It is going to the first person who emails me for it! I think it would make some cute socks for a little kid :)