Friday, February 20, 2009

Slaving over a hot stove

...to cook up two batches of yarn.


1. starting, 2. measuring, 3. cooking, 4. cooling, 5. drying, 6. admiring

Last weekend, I did some stovetop experimenting with wool, food colouring, and white vinegar. I had a 100-gram ball of white wool, which I divided into four small hanks. Batch 1 had 20 drops of red food colouring in it (which made a pretty light pink), and batch 2 had about half the 28-mL bottle (which made the most saturated bright-raspberry colour!). I think I'll knit a striped hat.

12 comments:

Nadia said...

Great colour!

Anonymous said...

Lovely! I had some great fun with easter egg dye tablets in past years. I pre wet fiber with water and a glug of vinegar and painted the dye on with a spoon using related colors. 30 minutes in a crock pot to set. I probably used about one tablet per oz of fiber. Spun for socks and color has stayed well.

Look for the dye kits on sale just before or after easter...

Gudrun Johnston said...

That is going to be one brilliant hat...can't wait to see!

Montreal Mama said...

That looks like fun. I've been wanting to play around with yarn dying myself. Though, I'm not sure where I'd cook up the time to do so!

The color is great - can't wait to see the finished project!

Anonymous said...

lovely! Kool Aide is fun to dye wool with too - and it smells yummy, fruity too.

Jessica said...

Cute colors.
Just FYI, those food colors are not very light-fast. Keep them out of the sun.

shannon said...

beautiful colors!!

Elizabeth said...

Mmmm... yummy yarn. Seriously, I want to eat it.

Anonymous said...

Very cool! So you just kind of cook the yarn in the vinegar and food coloring? Can I have more details? I've done some Kool-aid dyeing, but I would love to try food coloring because it seems much cheaper than professional dyes and I'm just at an experimental stage.

Unknown said...

You got great saturation with your colors! Fantastic job!!!

Anamorena said...

Muy lindos colores....

Meg said...

so lovely! like little bowls of sherbert