So let's try this out!

So, the idea of a blog is so that one can put down ones thoughts and go ranting about what comes to mind. Mhm ... don't know if I can keep it up but I guess I'll just give it a try.

What did I do today? Apart from feeling jetlag from lack of sleep, I've managed to dye my first skein of Bluefaced Leicester with food colouring from SuperCook. I've been playing around with the idea of dyeing my own yarns now for some time. Button on Ravelry sells wonderfully coloured, cuddly soft hand-dyed yarns and I thought to myself, 'Could I do that?' Being a knitter, although I don't have as much time as I would like to have to enjoy my hobby, I guess the next logical step would be to learn how to spin yarn from roving, and then dye it. As I'm not a person with much patience, I thought I'd skip a couple of steps and dive straight into dyeing.

Button was really helpful and steered me to the right groups on Ravelry that would help me with questions I might have. After reading up and having an information overload migraine, I decided to take the plunge today. I had bought undyed yarn in a cone from Texere which arrived last week, and was pretty stump as to how to get a 100gm skein out of it. And without a niddy noddy, I was pretty much faced with the idea of either using the back of a chair or my arm (got this idea from YouTube). I chose my arm. With the cone on a weighing machine, I skeined my 100gm till my arm protested.

I first soaked the yarn in vinegary water, more water than vinegar cause vinegar really stinks. The idea is to wet the yarn to take in colour and the vinegar helps absorption faster. I then mixed up my yellow and red dye colours, with some water and vinegar (just a touch). I then dyed the yarn on cling film, yellow on one side and red of the other and orange in the places when they bled together. I then re-wrapped it in new cling film and moved the whole thing to my steamer, and steamed it for 40 mins. I think 30 mins would have done the trick but I really wanted to make sure it worked.

40 mins later, I had my first hot phoenix fire looking yarn. Well, it felt really hot coming straight from the steamer, and with it's bright colours (I need to experiment more to get more subtle colours), it looked more acrylicky than pure wool. I waited a bit then rinsed it, and then washed it with a little wool detergent. Mainly to get the vinegary smell out. It's now hanging on the line and I'm waiting for it to dry. I'll post a picture of it as soon as I can figure out how to.

Well, guess that's it for the first blog. :-)