Kiss My Knits!

Dye day went well. Jetsyknits blogged about it here, and Turtlegirl76 already blogged about it and another entry is coming.

Last year I picked up five pounds of Romney fiber, pictured left, on the cheap. I didn’t open the individual bags until Saturday. At that point I discovered that the quality, which I already knew wasn’t really top notch, wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped. But hey! That’s okay! I got it to be practice fiber, and it was time for it to fulfill its destiny. I started some fiber soaking about an hour before folks arrived so that they’d have something to start on immediately. The previous post shows some of this fiber dyed, as does the Jetsyknits post.

We had acid dyes in red, yellow, blue, and black so we could mix our own. We also had Wilton’s icing dyes. I had a sample of Fisherman’s Wool that I had previously dyed with Wilton’s to demonstrate how the blues separate like cah-razy in Wilton’s. It does provide some interesting effects, though, and I thought it was important to experiment with different kinds of dyes.

Turtlegirl76 bought me some undyed wool at a festival a while back, and threatened in no uncertain terms to kick my butt if I didn’t stop playing hostess long enough to actually dye something myself.

We all had a lot of fiber we wanted to dye, so frankly, we skimped a little on the soaking. We pushed the fiber down into the water some when proper protocol is to let it gently sink into the water to avoid excessive agitation. But this didn’t get too felted, which is good because it’s so big and pretty.

I used the leaf green acid dyes that Turtlegirl76 brought and cold-painted. It turned out nice and subtle, but since I’ve already got some roving similar to this, I decided later to overdye it. There’ll be pictures of it in its new shade once it dries as part of a separate post with overdyeing pictures.

I wrapped the wool securely in Saran wrap, sealing it up. Then it went into a vegetable steamer basket in a big pot on the stove so it could steam and the dye could really penetrate. While the wool was steaming all snug in its Saran Wrap sausage, I cranked up the crock pot. We used some of Turtlegirl’s leaf green and the Romney. Interesting, eh? Different method, different fiber, same dye. I’m calling this colorway “as-is” since that was the label on the top of the two dollar crock pot when I bought it.

We let the fiber sausages steam on the stove for about a half hour. Now, again, ideally you’d wait and let them cool down on their own, but we were impatient. There were some scalded fingers as yarn sausages which had inadequately cooled were unrolled and hung on the line. That clothesline has never looked so gorgeous as it did yesterday. Did I get a picture? I did not. Others did, so go to their blogs.



I had a single skein of Louet Gems Opal that I also cold-poured. This is straight blue acid dye, blue mixed with black, and blue mixed with a little red. I like keeping the same base and varying the shade. I’m really pleased with how this turned out. Of course, there’s just one skein for a total of 225 yards, soo… anklets? I don’t know. At any rate, I’m calling this Blue Jean for obvious reasons. I’m a big fan of blue.



Everybody was very gracious in wanting to help clean up, but several of the dyers had other places they had to get to fairly immediately, so I did most of the cleanup. It actually went really fast, since it was mainly throwing cups away. Jetsyknits’ husband was also helpful, so a big thank you to him. Surprisingly, there were no mystery stains on the floors, and the counters easily came clean with just a little Comet and elbow grease.

For me, more magic happened after folks left. Turtlegirl left me some of her leaf green in that crock pot, and I did a little experimenting. I’m thrilled with the results and can’t wait to show you.

This is the first time we’ve had more than two people at a time in the house since we moved in if you don’t count the kid’s birthday party. We used to throw Star Trek parties back in the day, but “the day” was nearly twenty years ago. This was long overdue. It’s tough to balance parenting with adult gatherings, especially when your child isn’t really fond of noise and unpredictability. But a) she wasn’t there, and b) she’s doing better as she gets older. I think with some support, which Steve is great about, gatherings like this are within the realm of possibility.

I’m already thinking of what we can do for next time. I’ve got a few interesting ideas for self-striping yarn that I want to try out. We’ll have to block out another huge hunk of time on another warm weather day and do it again!