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Posts tagged ‘dyeing’

Apr 8

2 Comments

Who Are You? Are We Enemies? Why Am I on This Wall? Where is Buttercup?*

All Your Questions Answered.

1. Do you have the plans for that swift?
My hubby made it from a pattern that I found on Crafty Diversions website

2.What do you use to weight it?
It is actually pretty well-balanced so I don’t weight it. I do put it on a non-skid surface and then wind away.

3. How do you keep the yarn from tangling?
You just tie it at a few intervals along the hank to keep the bundle of yarn from tangling. In this case, I used the yarn from the skein, but you can also use waste yarn to tie it. I tied the hang about every 6 inches.

4. Just how daft are you for not using gloves?
Pretty daft actually. I spent waaaaay too long working as a chemist to have any brain cells left. This lack of brain cells causes me to do silly things like stick my hands in dye but it makes for entertaining conversation as you never know exactly what I might say.
(I confess, that exact wording wasn’t used. My readers are far too polite to say that. I paraphrased your remarks a wee bit for the sake of humor. Since your comments made me laugh, I thought I would return the favor.)

5. Are you now wearing nail varnish to hide your dye job?
Nope. I boldly sported my other-worldly nails in my Bible class that night. I think it scared my class – which is not an easy thing to do when dealing with 10-12 year-olds. They certainly behaved better than usual that night.

6. Are your nails still blue? Naw. It actually washed off in a couple of days leaving no residue at all. And my nails smelled nice and fruity until the color wore off.

* Yes, I am still making Princess Bride references. My kids are addicted to it and we are watching it at least once a week. Seriously, you need to see this movie.

Mar 31

7 Comments

I Dyed that Day

And you can dye too, for all I care.*

In Sunday’s post, we got our yarn ready for dyeing. Today we play with dye. We will be using two colors as the finished product will be a striped, felted purse. We are using Kool-Aid Lemon-Lime and Berry Blue as our dyes. So here is the process for dyeing yarn in your kitchen with the help of a preteen.

Step 1

The yarn must be thoroughly wetted so it will absorb the color.

To do this, soak the yarn in lukewarm water to which you have added a couple of drops of Dawn dish washing detergent (use the plain blue Dawn not the fancy shmancy kinds)

Step 2

While the yarn is soaking, it is time to mix your dye.

You will need one package of Kool-Aid per ounce of yarn. We used one extra package for good saturation. Each hank was approximately 4 ounces so we started with 5 packages of Kool-Aid. Mix the Kool-Aid with enough water to dissolve it but the ratio of water to dye is not critical.

Mix thoroughly.

You want the dye to completely dissolve in the water. Otherwise, you might have dark or oddly colored spots on your yarn.

Step 3

Pour the dye over the yarn.

Remove yarn from soaking water and place it in a microwave safe bowl. Pour the dye evenly over the yarn until the yarn is just covered by liquid. If you don’t have enough liquid in your dye solution, add a little water to bring up the volume.

Push down slightly on yarn to make sure that it is completely covered with dye solution and that there are no air pockets in the middle of the hank.

Step 4

Heat set the dye.

Heat on full power for two minutes. Allow yarn to cool for two minutes. Repeat the heating and cooling cycle until all the dye is absorbed and the water is clear.

Remove yarn from microwave and allow to cool. Don’t rush this step.

When yarn is cool, wash with mild detergent or no-rinse wool wash using water that is the same temperature as yarn. Rinse using water that is the same temperature. DO NOT temperature shock the wool unless you want felt at this point. I cannot over emphasize this point. It doesn’t take a lot of temperature variation to cause felting. Trust me on this. Ironically, if you actually want the wool to felt it doesn’t happen this easily.

Step 5

Drain the yarn and gently squeeze out the excess water. Hang yarn and it allow to air dry. There will be water dripping from the yarn as it dries so hang it outdoors, out of direct sunlight, or somewhere that the dripping water won’t hurt, like over the bathtub.

Step 6

Admire and enjoy your beautiful yarn.

Tabitha’s Tips

Or Lessons Learned the Hard Way

  • Wear gloves. Or use a spoon.

    Hands and nails absorb dye really, really, really, really well – possibly as well as yarn.

  • It is easier to get the dye off your hands than your nails.

    And blue-green nails have a rather unique other-worldy, Bride of Frankenstein sort of appearance.

  • Pay attention to the dye absorption rates. If it seems that all the dye is gone from the water after the first heat cycle, you probably need more dye. We found that the green required more dye than the blue to get good saturation. We ended up using 2 packages of dye per ounce of yarn for the green.

  • If you have to add additional dye, make sure that the liquid is the same temperature as your yarn. Don’t temperature shock your yarn.

  • Have fun.

We know the secrets of the Fire Swamp. So whenever you feel like dyeing, come visit.*

*The Princess Bride references. Can you tell we have watched it a few too many times lately? Just be glad the topic of this post wasn’t Mawwiage or Twoo Wuv.

Other Posts in this series.
…Prepare to Dye

Mar 29

8 Comments

…Prepare to Dye

DragonPurls, along with some of her internet friends, is embarking on a dyeing, knitting, and felting adventure. She wants to knit a present for a friend of hers and we decided it might be fun to dye the yarn too. For the next several days/weeks I will be documenting our adventure together.

It started with the purchase of a huge skein of Fisherman’s wool from a Hobby Lobby sale. For the sake of safety, we are using food dyes for our wool. After extensive research, she settled on the colors Lemon-Lime and Berry Blue. Kool-aid and yarn purchased, the next task is dividing the skein and winding into a nice hank for dyeing.
Here is the beginning of the process.

Here we are a little further along, when we had to pause to remove a tangle.

Since I don’t have a yardage meter (a deficiency I intend to correct next time Hubs wants to go to Bass Pro Shop), I had to come up with another way to divide the 465 yard skein onto two relatively even hanks. I think DragonPurls and I came up with a clever way to handle the problem.

First, I measured the distance around the pegs on the swift that my dear, sweet husband made for me. By my calculation, the distance around was about 2 yards. By calculation, we realized that 115 rounds of the swift should be approximately half of the skein. With the help of a handy dandy row counter, we wound 115 rounds of yarn onto the swift. At this point the yarn was broken and the hank secured in a number of places to prevent tangling. We then wound the other half of the skein. Our guesstimation calculations worked pretty well because the skeins were pretty close to the same weight (based on observation since I also do not have a yarn scale).

So now we have two lovely cream colored hanks of yarn all ready for an afternoon of dyeing.

Apr 20

16 Comments

Dyeing for Spring Part 2


Here is my hand dyed yarn all wound into a ball with the beginning of a new sock. This is – or will eventually be – a sock that I am test knitting. It promises to be a challenging and fun knit. I will keep you posted. The yarn has a few very light spots in it where the yarn didn’t dye very darkly. I am not certain that I like this but I decided to go ahead and knit and it. If I still don’t like it when I am finished, I will re-dye the completed socks. Mistakes and all, I am still pleased with my first attempt at dyeing.

I bought myself this great “Nostepinde” at Hobby Lobby yesterday.

They called it a mini-baseball bat but it works great as a nostepinde and hopefully my youngest will not swipe it to use for craft projects like he does with the paper towel tubes. I was going to buy a wooden dowel and then I spied the bat and decided that it was about the right size so it wouldn’t require cutting and it was already sanded smooth. I also like the thinner handle. It makes ball winding more comfortable to me. And best of all it was cheap!! I know it isn’t as nice as a real nostepinde but I decided that I would rather save my money for a ball winder.

In other Hobby Lobby news, I got More Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch with my 40% off internet coupon. This book was not what I was expecting. The sock patterns are great – just like I was expecting – and ones that I will use over and over. But what I wasn’t expecting was for there to be instructions for all the major types of sock knitting – 4 dpn, 5 dpn, toe up, top down, 2 circs, Magic loop – as well as an extensive stitch library and sock construction techniques – heels, toes, cast ons, grafting, bind offs, etc. This is an incredible resource. It certainly lives up to the hype. I highly recommend it if you do not already own it. Now I simply must have Sensational Knitted Socks.

Apr 18

12 Comments

Just Dye-ing for Springtime

The weather here cannot decide what season it is. One day the temperature is below freezing and the next it is nearly 80. Consequently, my spring blossoms are all brown and the lawn is still bare. It’s starting to get downright depressing.

In an effort to encourage spring to hurry and bolster my mood, I broke out the egg dye. I used a bit to dye eggs for the kiddos for breakfast – my youngest has been nagging me for weeks to dye some eggs. Shortly after breakfast, I got a new sock pattern. The sample was knitted in a lovely grass green. I realized that I did not have a green in my stash but I simply had to knit this sock in green. In my frantic search for green yarn, I unearthed a skein of KnitPicks Bare that I had purchased with the intention of trying my hand at Kool-aid dyeing. Well, I thought, there is no time like the present. I whipped out the vinegar and the rest of the egg dye and a microwave safe bowl and dyeing instructions from Knitty and proceeded to make a colossal mess of my kitchen. Here are the results.

A beautiful and vibrant spring green. Spring has finally arrived at my house. Please ignore the bare lawn in the background.

There are a few mistakes I made, lessons I learned and things that I will do differently next time around but over all I am pleased with the results. Can’t wait to knit it. While it is drying, I think I will shop for some more naked yarn!