Dying to Dye

I was lucky enough to have today off since I worked yesterday, Memorial Day, and made double time. I now have 3 days off in a row...woohoo! So I decided to finally try and dye that KnitPicks sock yarn I've had aging in my closet. Let me tell you...I think it's a lot easier to buy the yarn already dyed! It took me 2 hours to dye a freaking skein of yarn. WTF! First, I had to wind it off into a much longer hank so the color repeats would produce stripes (we'll see if that actually happens when I knit it). It took over a half hour of walking back and forth between 2 chairs to produce this long hank, check out the photo! Then you have to tie it off every couple feet so you don't end up with a tangled, useless mass of knots. Then soak the ginormous hank in the sink with cool water and a glug of vinegar. While it's soaking I mixed the colors I wanted...lilac, pink, and green. I used Wilton Food Color Gels, used for tinting and coloring frosting. Then I carefully lifted the longggg hank of yarn from it's bath and immersed it into the dye bath bowls. Then into the microwave for 5 minutes. We're not even to the hard part yet. After the dye has been soaked up (I'm sure there's a correct term for the soaking up part but I don't know what it is!) then you let it sit and cool. When cool, carefully rinse in plain water. Now the part that sucks...trying to find a safe place for this bugger to dry! I rearranged the chairs from my patio set and very carefully, praying the whole time, slipped the giant hank over the chair backs. The chairs were forming a square around my deck with the yarn stretched over the backs. After the yarn dried, I walked around the chair square and wound the hank...took another half hour!

What a lot of work for some mediocre colored yarn! The colors faded a lot when the yarn dried and I have no idea why. I also dyed another hank but this one I wound much shorter and it was much easier to handle. It is bright colors and is still drying. All in all, I can't say that I am in any hurry to do this whole thing again...in fact, I may never do it again! I certainly have a new appreciation for people who do this for a living.