not a lazy suzen

There is nothing better than spending a Sunday morning in the dye studio. It felt so good to focus on something quite methodical. Measuring, mixing, figuring out the math. Ahhh….it’s a type of control that any obsessive worry wart thrives on. A kind of control that is so precise that little is left up to chance if done right. Every so often it is great to do something just for the sake of being in order. Plus, brushing up on some basic dye skills after almost three years not dyeing is refreshing. It took a few minutes to remember everything but once I got going, it was a lot like riding a bike.

Before embarking on a huge dyeing project, I thought I’d wet my feet with some overdyeing. Like many knitters, I have an overwhelming abundance of unused sock yarn. I tend to buy sock yarn on a whim and then never get around to knitting it up because I’m not as excited about the colour as I was when I saw it in the store. So, overdyeing seems like the perfect solution to breathe new life into some boring yarns.

In the photo above, they’re soaking in preparation for the dye bath. I chose a skein of single ply pink fingering weight wool from Briggs & Little, a hand-dyed skein of random neutral blue-grey-brown wool from Pudding Yarn in Calgary, and a ball of machine dyed wool in mostly yellows that’s meant to look as if its hand-dyed. I chose these skeins because of how they would react to the same dye bath, each mixing with the dye in its own way.

The colour I chose was 90/10 mixture of turquoise and yellow at a depth of shade of 0.25%. I wanted the bluey-green to be fairly pale so it wouldn’t overpower the original colour of the yarns but be deep enough to pop with vibrancy. I kept the bath going for little over an hour before draining and rinsing the wool. Normally I would have left it to absorb every little bit of the dye but the bath was pretty pale to begin with so I didn’t feel bad about pouring it out.

I ended up with pretty nice results, the three skeins in varying shades of blue and green. The pink skein, pictured in the middle, is probably the dullest but will more than likely knit up super pretty. I had tied off sections of the skein before putting it into the bath to resist the dye, leaving little areas pink. There’s a chance I may overdye it again but I’m not sure.

The other two skeins turned pretty shades of blue-green. Here are some close-ups:

I’ll take a few more photos of this yarn once it has completely dried since the colours will lighten a smidgen. Then they’ll get wound into balls and knit into more pairs of socks! I’m excited to do some more dyeing! Maybe even some spinning….Ohhh! It’s like I opened up the flood gates….there’s no stopping me now!