Yarn Dyeing

Last month I held a yarn dyeing party at my place for our knit group.  Everyone brought some yarn to dye and there was a variety of food coloring and kool-aid to play with.  Since the weather cooperated, I was able to set up a dyeing station in the back yard.  I opened up my clothes line umbrella so we could hang the yarn to dry, covered the table with newspaper and busted out the collection of mason jars.  

For my yarn, I took my vinegar soaked skein of Knit Picks Bare Stroll Fingering, about 20 toothpicks, some Wilton's gel and one packet of Tropical Punch Kool-Aid.  I took the toothpicks, dipped them in the gel and stabbed my skein of yarn to give it the polka dot effect.  After I had a bunch of dots, I took the kool-aid and sprinkled it all over for a confetti effect.  Then I wrapped it in plastic wrap and stuck in in the microwave for a couple of minutes until the dye was set.  

I ended up knitting a pair of monkeys out of it and am in love with how it knit up.  I am definitely trying this technique again.

After the dyeing was done, we made some pizza and salad, sat around, knit and just enjoyed the rest of the day.  Jen's husband even made an appearance!  Overall, I would say the day was a success.  I can't wait to host another dye session soon.

Jess was a wonderful hostess and I look forward to another dyeing party sometime soon.  I bought a skein of sock yarn from Kramer Yarns in Nazareth. They are a local mill and sometimes that have mill ends that they sell for a discount. The skein I bought appeared to be the superwash fingering (none of the yarn is labeled), but it was only $3!  I took a little snippet and tried to felt it in my hands. When I couldn't get it to felt up I decided that I must be right with it being the superwash yarn.  I made ten 10 gram mini-skeins and then dyed them up in mason jars. I used a variety of food coloring to dye my mini-skeins. Here are the results:

Phoebe's has to be in all my photos....

I plan to knit up squares on my sock yarn blanket with these.  I have enough in these skeins for Jess to knit a square of each color in her blanket too :-)