Sunday, January 6, 2008

From "Zebra Stripe Gum" to "Easter Egg Rainbows"

My adventures in dying and spinning- 12/31 (dying) and 1/5 (spinning):

1. Start with 4 oz of superwash merino roving that's been calling my name for MONTHS!
2. Divide into six equal 'bumps' since I have six tablets of Easter Egg Dye.
3. Give each bump a home inside a ziploc bag.
4. Prepare the egg dyes with a splash of vinegar.
5. Add warm water to each Ziploc until the fiber bumps are soaked, then add a cup of dye.
6. Stash the ziplocs into pre-warmed crock pot with water, turn on low, and go do something for a couple of hours.
7. Once the water in each ziplock is clear (all dye is taken up by the fibers) remove bags from crock pot and let cool.
8. Rinse with clear same-temp water a couple of times and lay out on a towel. Roll the towel up and squeeze out excess water.
9. Hang to dry on dowel (along with a couple of skeins of hand-spun Brown Sheep mill-ends yarn. May as well multi-task!)
This is where my dh walked in and said "Hey- first it was Hippy Guts and now you have Zebra Stripe Gum!" I can always count on him for comic relief!
10. Once COMPLETELY dry, divide each color into four (relatively equal) segments, and roll into color-sequence bumps. (I off-set each 'bump' by about 1/5 of the red/pink so the color repeats when I did 2-ply would be a little bit off-set.)
11. Spin fine singles.
12. Finished! 2 skeins of 2-ply fingering weight "Easter Egg Rainbows" yarn! Can't wait for it to dry so I can knit socks!



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful!

Did you lay your ziploc bags directly in the hot water in your crock pot?