Yarn Dyeing

When we start running The Quizzical Owl as a business at the start of October one of the areas that we will be expanding into is yarn dyeing. It is something that I am very keen to try. I've been told I have a very good eye for colours. I have been very lucky to have been given a couple of opportunities to have chats with dyers and to do a little bit of dyeing of my own.

After spending time with Jeni from Fyberspates, these are the results. These skeins were painted with dye by hand, and steamed. Each of the four skeins below were dyed with the same dyes. The skein on the bottom left is an aran of pure wool (not superwash), and has taken up the colour differently from the superwash merino/silk blends (the two yarn cakes) and the sparkly yarn skein.

On a visit to The Knitting Goddess (Joy) I tried my hand at doing semi-solid colours.  I chose pink and green.

And the results:

The yarn cake is superwash merino and nylon, the top pink is a merino/alpaca blend, green is merino and tencel, superwash and nylon, and the last is a mini skein that I had dyed with Kool-Aid some years back and threw into the dye pot to see what happened.

Thanks must go to Jeni and to Joy for letting me mess around with colours, hot water, paintbrushes and for teaching me many things about the world of dyeing.

It's a world I can't wait to try out.

Alex