To Dye For!

Oooooohhhh, I had such fun today.


I ordered some undyed yarn during the week to have a play at dyeing with. Apparently Roger (postie) left it with next door on Friday, and she gave it to Colin yesterday afternoon when she saw him coming up the path. I was desperate to play with it yesterday, but the kitchen needed tidying (Sean kindly stacked the dishwasher for me), and as we were going out for dinner last night (we went to Jimmy Spices in Solihull), the tidying didn't get done until this morning. And then I had to nip to Sainsburys to get some rubber gloves (otherwise I'd have had rainbow fingers).


So I had two skeins of aran and 1 BFL top to play with. For the first skein of aran I mixed up some ice blue, eucalyptus and red and then painted the yarn. Here it is mid-bake (and you can see the undyed colour on the top left of the picture). For the next skein, I chucked the remainder of the eucalypus into the bowl and then threw the yarn in on top. It went a lovely silvery-green colour. I decided to flick a spray of red on top, and then decided I liked the colour it turned (sort of a silvery mauvey grey), so I threw the rest of the red in too and gave it a little squish before shoving in the wave-de-micro. Then for the top, I made it into a spiral and then poured on blue and yellow. For my first attempts I am really really pleased with how they came out, particularly the eucalyptus and red mix. So, after cooking, cooling, rinsing and spinning (in a tied pillowcase in the washing machine), my lovely yarn is now hanging on the mirror in the hall, and has been fondled lovingly by me every time I have walked past this afternoon and evening.

Here's a pic I took of the three of them before I hung them up to dry (twisted into skeins purely for effect, I untwisted them after taking the pic, which incidentally is slightly out of focus, sorry).

I can see that I will be back down the icing shop in the week to get some more colours to play with (or I could raid Mum's stash when we go to London at the weekend - she is a skilled sugarcraft artist); and then of course I will have to buy more undyed yarn to play with. That in itself will present another problem. Colin was furious that I was dyeing today, as he did not like the wet sheepy-woolly smell emanating from the kitchen (I actually quite liked it myself). I suppose the solution in future would be to put the yarn in a tightly tied pillowcase and run it through the washing machine on a quick wash first to get rid of the smell before I dye it. Dunno.

My next project is going to have to be persuading someone (probably my Dad, who is a retired carpenter) to make me a swift so that I can re-skein my yarn nice and easy (I could ask Colin, but as I'm still waiting for the kitchen to be finished, four years down the line, I don't think I'll get one). The only thing is, when am I going to have time to knit all this dyed loveliness up anyway? Or to spin the top (I already have five and a bit other tops to spin, and no time to spin it in).

More snow this afternoon. Not much though, about half an inch if that. I hope we don't get more overnight, I will not be happy if the schools are shut tomorrow, and even less happy if after school club is shut again.

Time for a couple of rows of knitting. I cast on tonight for my Meret, courtesy of Gladcat in the UK Swap. With any luck I will have it finished by Thursday so that I can wear it on my trip to London on Friday.