Sunday, December 13, 2009

Can you tell the difference?

Ugly yarn!
Handspun overdye
One of the little things I've dug out lately was some of the yarn I have on hand, but really need to re-purpose. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the yarn itself, it just isn't exactly to my taste.

Take this lovely skein of hand-spun yarn. It is three-ply, spun on my spindle. It's very nicely even work (if I have to say so myself). But I'm not particularly a fan of the marled effect. And I particularly don't like how yellow the green is.

Enter my stock of Jacquard acid dyes.

I haven't done much dying so far. I played around with it a little with several batches of Merino top, and with eight ounces of BFL (which ended up hopelessly compacted, but that's a different story). Yarn is MUCH more simple to dye. Pre-soak yarn so it's wet. Drop it in a pot with some dye and add heat and acid and VIOLA! you have dyed yarn. There is some small risk of felt occurring, but it is significantly smaller (and less disastrous) than creating an unusable mass of unspun wool.

I didn't even measure. I tossed this skein in a Pyrex dish dedicated to the purpose, put in a glug of vinegar and a glug of "Emerald" dye stock, and tossed it in my "dying microwave" in the garage for 15min on 50%. Come back, and there is exhausted dye solution, and a... well. It's a little greener skein of yarn. I think.

Do you?

1 comment:

Geek Knitter said...

I think it looks greener... 's purty!