Coloring Yarn

I was a little surprised when I looked over the blog history to find it has been almost two years since I dyed yarn. I guess it was time to dye some more.

I take a stay-cation around this time of year. Not because my birthday week is a grand thing, but because I don't think I should have to work on my birthday. I don't think anyone should have to work on their birthday. Take a long weekend, at least! You deserve it for surviving another year. At any rate, that's why I had an entire Tuesday to spend coloring yarn with my yarn friend. I bought some fingering weight superwash yarn from Knit Picks a couple weeks ago to be ready for this fun. This is Bare Stroll Fingering, which is a great base if you like to knit with fingering weight yarn. We also had a few hanks of Bare Stroll Glimmer, which has a little Stellina to make it sparkle.

To prepare for long color runs I cake the yarn before making my knit blanks. Ball winder from Knit Picks, yarn swift from Knit Picks, Addi Turbo knitting machine from Amazon. 

This yarn was dip-dyed using PAAS Easter Egg coloring kits. I used two kits, so two tablets of each color, six colors total. Total yarn colored: 200 grams. I also used Wilton Icing Coloring set to get some really fun colors. Working with food-safe dye is something I learned watching ChemKnits on YouTube. It is possible to use your kitchen tools to dye yarn without worrying about poisoning your dinner.

This amazing green and bright fuchsia was achieved using Jacquard acid dyes (these are not food safe). You might not be able to tell in this photo, but that is glimmer yarn. 200 grams. 

This is one blank I colored for long color runs. This isn't the first time I've done this (go back to that post from 2016) but this time I used 300 grams of yarn and nine colors of different length runs. This was done using Jacquard acid dye.

I wound it up so you can see the color runs getting longer and longer. This photo is a little washed out, but I really think the project I have planned for this one is going to be great! If I do this again I'm going to plan my colors more carefully, and try to get some more variety. 

At the end of the day I had 1500 grams of freshly colored yarn hanging in my bathroom. I can't wait to cake it up and get stitching!

There are several different dye techniques you can use on natural fibers. I recommend you do some research to decide which is best for you. Dye kits: Greener Shades Acid Dye - available from Knit Picks and Jacquard Acid Dye - available from Knit Picks

I use a multi-level steamer (dedicated for dye use only) similar to this one to heat-set the colors.