The Day We Dyed

This weekend was my knitting group's yearly knitting retreat.  Every fall the group rents a cabin in the woods to spend the weekend knitting, dying yarn, playing games, or whatever strikes their fancy.  This was the first year I had the weekend free to go and I am oh so glad that I did!  Not only did I have a ball spending the weekend away with my favorite nutty knitters, but as a knitter that had never delved into the world of dying, I was happy to have my support group walk me through the process.  

I had a plan in mind when I brought my two skeins of natural Malabrigo Lace to the dying party. (Yeah, we made the dye/die joke the entire weekend.)  I had heard about people dying their yarns with coffee and tea.  I'm a tea junkie so I made a few cups of earl grey and chai and then threw the tea bags in the vinegar mix for good measure.

Wet skeins totally look like intestines.  Way less yummy than dry, smooshy yarn!

I dyed the second skein with the teas too, but then I splashed burgundy dye on it.  We were all puzzled when the burgundy turned bubblegum pink after a few minutes in the oven. It was weird, but we rolled with it, adding light browns and yellows to tone down the pink into a more dusty pink.

Look at all that yummy yarn!

 I didn't get pictures of everybody's goodies, but Nikki's tye dye yarn was my absolute favorite!  I can't wait to see what she makes out of it!

After I got the hang of it, I was kicking myself for only bringing two skeins to dye, but lucky for me, Shelley didn't have time to dye all her mini-skeins she made for hexipuffs and she asked me to dye them for her.  UM, YES PLEASE.  

It was so much fun.  You can see where I tried to mimic Koigu and Malabrigo colorways.  I'm a fan, you know.  :)

Waiting on the yarn to dry was probably the hardest part of the entire process.  I kept pacing around, checking the yarn every few hours until the group told me that the yarn usually doesn't dry until the next morning.  Devastating!  

It felt like Christmas morning when I woke up on Sunday to find my yarn ready to wind up and go.  I'm so in love with the cream color the tea gave the yarn and the pink one is reminiscent of Malabrigo's dusty colorway, which makes me pretty happy.

I might have to make dying yarn a regular thing.  Yes?  Yes?