Dyeing Part II

Now for the exciting part! The dyeing part is great fun. I love making a big mess spooning on dye colors, squeezing the dye along a hank of yarn, seeing what color mixtures show up. Kay asked if I ever mixed the colors. I haven't, though I always think I'm going to. I usually run out of colors so fast I don't have time to play around too much.

And before we start this session, I've had a request to include a little med update at the end of each entry for a while just to let you know.

Here we go! When the jars come out of the hot water bath, the magic begins:
Look at this! The water is CLEAR! When the yarn goes in, the water is full of dye. When the yarn comes out, the dye is in the wool and the water is clear! I have a cold water bath ready on in the sink. As I dump each jar of clear water out, I squeeze out at much excess water as possible and drop the yarn in the bath. And here is the filled sink:

After rinsing the hot water out (usually there isn't any dye left to come out), squeeze each hank gently to get out as much water as possible and hang up to dry:

I have this kind of weird hanger I found at a yard sale years ago. It has octopus arms so I can do a LOT of yarn at the same time. Here it hangs in the guest shower full of draining yarn. It takes a couple of days for the yarn to completely dry.

And the finished hanks look like this. In the fading sunlight. Theresa asked a while back if people ever notice when knitters take pictures. I do a lot of pics on my front porch. Not once have I been able to get a neighbor to come out and ask what I'm doing. They probably think I'm nuts! And believe me, approach me while working with yarn and you take your non knitting life in your own hands - lol!

The next step is winding these up into useable balls. I set up my swift next to my ball winder and just start winding. Doesn't take too long unless you get a little extra help.

Okay, I've given up on getting pics posted here so am doing an update this morning just to show you how pretty the finished yarn turned out. The extra help came from the YI sitting UNDER the swift! She is not a tiny cat and I was kind of worried about whacking her in the head with the legs of the swift but she never wavered. And I guess it never hit her - lol!

And the medical update - Radiation treatments - 7 (half way thru), good day today, not nearly as crabby and whiny as yesterday - lol. Even I can hardly stand to be around myself on days like that!