(Almost) Instant Gratification

One weekend in May I was so annoyed after spending the better part of the day doing school related work that I needed a quick dye project to lift my spirits. So I got out some yellow Easter egg dye tablets and some orange and red KoolAid to dye a skein of yarn and a braid of fibre. Now yellow, orange and light red are usually not my colours, but

1. that is in fact the reason why I have a good collection of yellow and orange dye tablets by now.

2. the same is true for orange and light red KoolAid (it's not available where I live - but some awesome ravelers that I had the pleasure to exchange swap packages with have been so kind as to send me some in the past... the blues, greens and darker shades usually get used up fairly quickly).

3. I had a feeling that I should dye something fiery.

I started out by dyeing both yarn and fibre a light yellow using Easter egg dyes. Then I put the yarn into a casserole dish and sprinkled it randomly with orange, and red KoolAid. Wrapped it in oven proof plastic wrap and popped into the oven at 90°C for about an hour. 

The braid stayed in the dye pot, just covered with wather and I added dissolved KoolAid in certain spots.

I was quite happy with the yarn after rinsing and drying - and my 7 yo immediately fell in love, with it, too.

The fibre braid on the other hand seemed to be missing something. The yellow splotches didn't work for me, and the rest was too bright overall for my taste. 

So it went back into the dye pot, and I added some cyan coloured Easter egg dye here and there in an attempt to cover up the yellow and mute the overall brightness ... which to a certain degree dispersed throughout the dyebath. 

The result is simply stunning! It reminds me of verdigris on copper - I truly love it, and can't wait to spin it up (once my wheel is clear of an older project that has been lingering there for far too long).

What to do with those leftover Easter egg dyes...

So I dyed some eggs for Easter... because the kids wanted proper, colourful Easter eggs on the breakfast table to go with our "Hefezopf":

Those eggs did not take up all the dye, of course... so what do we do with leftover dye? Dye yarn of course! I found two balls of white sock yarn and decided I wanted to try a gradient dye.

Ingredients (assuming you did not just dye Easter eggs):

• vinegar
• 2 red Easter egg dye tablets
• 2 blue Easter egg dye tablets
• 2 balls of sock yarn à 50 g

Procedure:

1.   Soak both skeins in warm water with a dash of vinegar for a while.
2. Dissolve 1 red and 1 blue dye tablet in hot water with 4 tbsp vinegar. Pour the dye into the dye pot and add enough water to cover the wool.Dye both skeins a light purple.
3. Let the yarn dry enough not to cause to much of a mess in the livingroom when you roll the two strands into one ball.





4. Make a new dye bath using one red tablet. Put the ball of yarn in, making sure it is completely covered, start heating up the dye bath. When the outer layer does not seem to take up any more dye, start to wind the yarn onto a kniddy-knoddy VERY  SLOWLY. Caution! Hot! Go on until either all dye is depleted or you think you've got enough red-ish purple yarn on the kniddy-knoddy.



5. Wind the rest of the ball onto the kniddy-knoddy. Do this in a place where splashing water doesn't matter all that much... 



6. repeat step 3. Make sure you start at the red end.
7. Repeat steps 4 and 5 with a blue dye tablet. 
8. Let the yarn dry.
9. Separate the strands by winding them into two balls. Do this with no children around, because there's bound to be plenty of adult language involved.
10. (optional) Re-wind the balls into skeins or cakes to make them even more pleasing to the eye.

I just LOVE the result. Yes, seperating the two strands in the end was tedious... but I think it was totally worth the effort! Now I'm trying to decide what to make from these - leaning towards shawl...