I started a post on Ravelry in March suggesting my friends and I get together and try dying our own yarn. Everyone responded positively, so I ordered yarn and dye and prepared our house for the invasion.
Yesterday we were met with a beautiful day – sunny, 23 degrees C, a very light breeze and low humidity. We set up in the backyard and played with yarn and colour. I forgot to get my camera out during the day, but here are my results. The base yarn is knitpicks bare superwash/merino fingering weight. The dyes were the Jacquard acid dye starter kit.
First, I rewound one skein into a much longer skein and dyed sections about 1.5 feet long in primary colours and black. I had a shorter section left, so I mixed all the colours on it.
Winding it took a while as it was way too big for my swift. It turned into whole family entertainment. D and I winding, F&G messing it up.
A ball was finally wound and the colours show up really well.
Today I cast on for Jaywalker socks and I’ve named the colourway “Circus”. Originally it was called “Crayola” but it reminds me of a big top now.
I have a second skein that is very different. I started dying the whole skein yellow, then I massaged in some red and black and came out with a campfire skein. This will be made into something very special.
One of my friends posted a flickr set of the day here and another blogged about it at the end of this post to see another view of the day.
