February DAL (Dye-a-long)

They say patiance is a virtue, well I never claimed to be virtuous. There was mention of a DAL on Ravelry for February, the theme: Passionate Pink.

So, I ordered some dyes (Kool Aid and Procion MX) and a skein of yarn from DT Craft & Design. As usual their service is wonderful and my yarn and dyes arrived the next day.

Not being able to wait until February I had to have a play, well I've never used Procion MX before and dyeing is just too much fun not to mess around with it.

My base yarn is 75% Blue Faced Leicester/25% Nylon sock yarn and I used 2 sachets of Kool Aid Lemon-Lime and a quarter teaspoon of Procion MX dye powder in Brilliant Pink. I used the dip dye and microwave method.
I'm really pleased with how well the Procion MX dye worked, gave a good colour saturation throughout the skein.

I'd dye for you.

Okay, I've had another go at this dyeing malarky. I've used the same base yarn but a different method.

My dye stock was 2x black cherry 2x grape and 1x ghoul aid. This yarn was done in the slow cooker (crockpot). The dye was sucked up by the yarn so fast I was really quite worried. I'm not sure if I want to overdye with some bright red or not, not sure how that would look.

I've also included a picture of my previous attempt now that the yarn has dried.

Of course England being how it is, there is hardly any sunlight this morning to take the shots in, so it's quite dark and the true colours aren't quite right, I'm hoping it'll brighten up later and I can take some better pictures. These pictures were taken outside and are as good as it's going to get really.

Another dye job!

I tried my hand at dyeing yarn again today, using Kool Aid. Christ alive I couldn't drink the stuff as it smells so over-powering, but drink it I didn't, I did what any sensible person would do and bunged it on some undyed yarn.

My base yarn was 100g (400m/437yds) DT Craft & Design sock yarn (75%BFL/25%nylon) and I used 3 colours/flavours of Kool Aid in the following amounts:

1 sachet Ghoul Aid
2 sachet Black Cherry
2 sachet Grape

First of all I soaked my yarn, whilst doing that I set up my prep area by laying out strips of cling film, then I mixed the Kool Aid in 3 plastic cups with some water. After squeezing out the excess water I laid the yarn on the clingfilm in a large loop.

That's where it got fun :-) I mentally sectioned the yarn and got down to it, first I used the Ghoul Aid and just slowly poured the liquid on to the smallest section of yarn mopping up any excess with kitchen paper. I was wearing rubber gloves so was able to massage the liquid through the yarn, I did the same with the Black Cherry and Grape. The yarn really soaked it up but I was carefull to mop up anything that seemed to be going astray.

I gently wrapped the clingfilm over the yarn and gently lifted it to be put in a pyrex bowl, then I put it in the microwave and nuked it for 1 minute, took it out checked that it was getting hot and then shoved it back in for another minute. I did that a total of four times. Afterwards I set the bowl beside the sink and pulled the yarn out to speed up the cooling process.

Once it was cool enough I filled the sink with some warm water and put in a splash of wool wash and rinced the yarn, there was practically no dye comming out of the yarn so I squeezed out the excess water and it's currently hanging on the maiden to dry.

Having had a good old look at it, the yarn is very tie-dye like, I kind of like that effect (well I do now LOL). bearing in mind it's still wet I can't really tell the difference between the Ghoul Aid and the Grape so I can't wait for it to dry, I'm certainly not brave enough to risk putting the hair dryer on it.

If you're interested in giving it a go there are some tutorials here and here, go on, give it a go it's loads of fun. The best thing is, if I don't like the yarn when it's dry I can give it another go.