Wanting to learn to dye my yarn.

[Secksiebrat]

I have some beautiful sock yarn and 5 skeins of yarn I want to dye for my sweater.

I have a BUNCH of easter egg kits to dye with. Can someone give me some types or good sites to start learning how to dye? I've never done it before and I'm excited.

~danielle~

[dustinac]

The best thing that helped me was the show that aired on Knitty Gritty

I did find this website on using the Easter egg dyes

Here is another one..

hrmm.. I can not find the one I read.. she showed you step by step.. put saran wrap down on the table .. and how to add the dye..and then she showed you how to roll it up and put it in the heat... I'll keep looking for it..

One thing you might want to do is play around with the colors with scarps first.. Most of the time I think I know what color/colors I should have in the end.. and sometimes I do and sometimes I'm like

oh and when you dye and dry it.. sometimes I think that is the ickiest stuff but then when I wind it into a cake it changes and is pretty.. I wanna get a niddy noddy next so I can take pictures of pretty skeins... this morning I tried to wrap my mom's dyed yarn around my dh's hands it didn't work.. she is getting a nice cake of yarn instead...

ETA: here it is.. the one I thought was handy

[psammeadred]

I just dyed some recycled wool with Easter egg dyes. It turned out really pretty, even though I was going for darker, not brighter. I soaked the wool in warm water with a "generous splash" of white vinegar. Then I dissolved three tablets each of green and blue in about 1/2 C of white vinegar and poured it on the yarn, with the green on one side of the bowl and blue on the other. Then I microwaved it in 3-minute increments. Now it's a variegated blue-green.

Dustina, I put the dried and dyed hank back on the swift, cake it, then manually wind it back on the swift using a different diameter than before (usually larger, when possible; and I wind using the tail from the center of the cake). Changing the swift's diameter breaks up the painted pattern and creates the pretty hank we all crave. Using the swift a second time also ensures that when I want to cake the yarn again for use, I'm positive it will fit on the swift. (I could use dh, true, but he's a rather whiney and impatient swift who, like a 5-year-old, can't manage to stay still for more than thirty seconds...)

[dustinac]

Angelia that work a lot better thank you for the tip!! We first tried going between his thumb and around the elbow then around his wrists.. then he thought he could wrap better around my wrist.. but he wrapped to tight

Will give that a try next time got some soaking in vinegar today.. I won't be able to dye it till tonight after bed time though...

We needs photos!

[Eloewien]

I need to get a swift... I just balled my yarn right off the bat so I could use it... but it would be nice to put it into nice hanks to show off

[kemp]

This is the best dye site I have found.