Sunday, November 04, 2007

Dye-o-riffic Sunday!

Several weeks ago the lovely Anne gave me a skein of Bilby Yarns wool to dye up for her!
anne's yarn1
It was very exciting but also SO SCARY!! Dyeing for myself is one thing, but dyeing someone ELSE's yarn?! The pressure was ON! Not that Anne demanded particular colours or was ANYTHING other than the sweet, thoughtful and kind friend that she is - but I was SO keen to make something she would love and TERRIFIED I would stuff up the colour mixing and come up with some murky terrible mess or colours that clashed and were horrible! How could I do that to my lovely supportive friend?!

So.. I procrastinated a little.. I thought on the possible colours... I decided I needed to get back into the 'Dye Zone' and dye something else before I turned my hand to Anne's yarn.

So I took a skein of yarn I had dyed a while back, Bendigo Baby 4ply wool, an attempt at red/blue/purple sort of mix that had turned out horribly. I decided I would over-dye this monstrosity which would be a fantastic warm up to dyeing Anne's!!

It turned out BRILLIANTLY and I am -so- pleased! I can't post any photos here because I'm planning to make a little something for scrumptious Skoot and I don't want him to see by accident! So you'll have to take my word for it, til a later time *grin*

SO it was time to prepare Anne's yarn. I caaarefully immersed the skein in water with a dollop of vinegar.
anne's yarn 2
And allowed it to soak.. and soak.. and soak some more!

When I felt it was sufficiently 'marinated' I gently squeezed the water from the skein (NOT superwash, folks, VERY scary felt-factor!!) and laid it out on my bench to dye.

Now I'm not going to show any mid-dye shots yet - I want to wait and present the finished skein to Anne at our next meet up! So no colour shots yet, I'm afraid, it would spoil your surprise, wouldn't it Anne?!

IMG_2443
But here's an almost-action shot - with a couple of the colours mixed and all ready to go! The skein is quite happily out of the oven, steaming complete, and is relaxing in a nice cooling pot of water on the sink! Not long now 'til I can do another gentle squeeze and lay it out to dry! Whee!! =D

As you can see Chilli was very helpful through the entire dyeing process *grin*
IMG_2441

3 comments:

nuttnbunny said...

The suspense is KILLING me!

Ann said...

I will love any colors that you dye as it will be a work of art as you are so creative! I am dying to see it.

Irene said...

Oooooh you tease!!!

Ya gotta bring it soon so I can oooh ahhh!