Colorwork

First, a very belated catch-up from two weekends ago. Now that everyone else in the knitting community has done it, I decided I needed to actually try this whole yarn-dying thing myself. A bunch of us ended up chatting about it, and before we knew it, we had a dying day scheduled at one person’s house (although I realized later that just because I knew I was talking about yarn, Richard cannot always read my mind and I should have clarified a bit further when I told him that some knitters and I were going to get together to “die” on Sunday afternoon). Anyway. The hostess put in an order for Knitpicks Bare yarn and we all showed up with glass baking dishes and large quantities of Kool-aid in every possible color, and we commenced with the dying. And it is really, really fun (yes, I know. I am forever late to the party). The best part about having so many people participating was that we all tried different techniques, and so we could all get a chance to see how they worked. One woman created psychedlic sock yarn that looks almost tie-dyed. Another used regular food coloring (and vinegar) to color two hanks of sock yarn in varying shades of a gorgeous baby blue. The hostess skeined out a ball of sock yarn in a huge circle and then dyed one third of the skein red, one third green, and left the middle white, so that she can make some (very bright) Christmas themed socks. I put my first skein into a dish of orange Kool-aid, but as I’d hoped, it did not pick up the dye evenly, so the color swirls from pale melon to orange sherbet. And I put the second skein so that the bottom half was in purple, and then poured an equal amount of blue over the top half, creating what (I am hoping) will be a swirl of color once it is knitted up.

Pictures below show the results of our efforts. I am quite happy with how it all turned out, mainly because I still have a lot of that never-ending pink sock yarn, and I am thinking that if I could just turn it another color, maybe I would be inspired to work with it again.