On Wool and Dyeing

Elizabeth Kuebler Ross, stand aside. We're gonna make dyeing -- dyeing with an E mind you -- into a very good time. Stephania of Three Fates Knitting invited some of us to her basement studio in her new house for a sock blank and yarn dyeing class.

Here, Stephania gets seriously down to business, gloving up and putting on the apron in the middle of her alchemical lab.

First, some deep pondering. Which to use, which to use...

For us rank beginners, a set of the primary colors that we can mix to make what we want will suffice.

Once the solutions were ready, Stephania also had some KnitPicks sock blanks soaking, as well as some yarn for one of the party who wanted to hand paint yarn.

Once we had our dyes mixed in cups, with some vinegar added, we laid our blanks out over plastic wrap in paint trays and set to with sponge brushes. Eloise is poised and ready.

I went for stripes in shades of purple, with blue, green, and chestnut brown.

Patch shares my preferred colorways. She did her stripes in blue, purple, and green, and carefully painted both back and front for complete coverage.

Eloise went for an autumn theme in oranges and browns,

while Snarfy went totally autumn on a skein of aran yarn.

Mia did a monochrome dye job on a skein of laceweight.

Heck yeah, this is fun!

Once everything was painted up, it was wrapped in plastic wrap and put in the steamer to steam. I'll get my results when we all meet for knitting this afternoon. Now we're hoping this is just the first class of many, 'cause once you get your hands into the dye, you're already thinking, "Now for the next project..." Hmm, hand painted roving, fleece, hmmm...