I Just Can’t Wait to Dye!

Yes folks – you heard it. All I can think of these days is dyeing.

Here’s how it started..

At the Melbourne Craft and Quilt Fair I bought some beautiful hand dyed sock yarn. One of my favourites is from Stranded in Oz. I don’t even know the name of the colourway or blend because I pounced on it as soon as it was unpacked. The poor little skein didn’t have time to be labelled before I was seen running down the street with it. I’m fairly sure it’s “Dye My Pretties” in “Campfire”.

In preparation for a “Design Your Own Shawl” class I will be teaching, I thought it would be a good idea if I made up a shawl or two as samples. I have designed and made shawls as gifts mostly so there aren’t any in my wardrobe.  I can’t really turn up to teach a class in shawl design without any evidence that I can actually knit a shawl, let alone design one.

So I started knitting. At first I thought the variegated colourway was going to be a problem and make the lace patterns indistinguishable. After about 20 rows it all started to come together. Now I really want to finish the shawl so I can have a sample but I don’t want to finish it because it means I’ll have to stop playing with this amazingly coloured yarn.

Ok, so it doesn’t look like anything right now because its tiny section of an unblocked, half-knit shawl. What I’m trying to show is the incredible, hand painted yarn. I haven’t even tweaked the colours in the picture – it’s just that saturated and intense in real life.

Because I’m always greedy for yarn, I decided that I had to find a way to ensure a constant supply of hand painted yarn in exactly the colours that appealed to me. The only sensible solution is to start dyeing my own yarn. (Yes, I know it’s not sensible at all – I’m just trying to justify buying more yarn).

So I’ve ordered a dyeing starter kit, bought some yarn to experiment on and am now waiting for the dye kit to arrive.

I’m not a very patient person and the torture of a whole, sunny weekend without dyeing yarn got too much for me. So I decided to dye my hair instead.

Bad move. It’s looks like a kind of Muppety apricot. Now I have to go back to the chemist to get a deeper shade so my hair goes red instead of apricot. Hmmm… what’s the worst that could happen?

Stay tuned for news of my messy yarn dyeing experiments. Also, in the next few days I will post details of the “Design Your Own Shawl” classes I will be teaching in Melbourne for anyone interested.