Where Is Dexter When You Need Him?

I took some time out to play with dyeing yarn, because I was seduced.

I bought this from WEBS, which described it thusly:

Judi & Co Isabella is a railroad-style fashion yarn on a cone. Experiment with dyeing this one. Only the cotton squiggle will take the dye.

The call to my imagination was fatal: only the squiggle? How would that look? I was intrigued.

Now, I don't dye. I don't spin. I limit other fiber crafts because they would cut into my knitting time, and I need my knitting time. So anyone reading this who is a dyer, please understand that I waded into this project in the spirit of experimentation and play, without any intention to be utterly serious.

In other words, I probably made a lot of mistakes which will make you laugh -- and I don't much care. Laughter is good.

First, with a vision of longer color changes dancing in my head, I took the yarn and did Navaho plying, and then plied the ply, and then plied it once more, until I had 'ropes' which were 27 strands wide.

It looks like roving, doesn't it?

The safest place to dye seemed to me to be the bathroom, so I prepared it with plastic wrap.

The bathtub....

....and the sink. It wasn't fun, frankly.

Do you watch Dexter? It has a serial killer who, when he's getting ready to commit his crimes, brings out these large rolls of plastic.

That would have been so useful.

I bought a kit for dyeing teeshirts, and then guessed on adjusting dye amounts for the yarn.

You can see the glasses used for different colors -- it looked like Easter. I poured the prepared dyes into the measuring cup, and then into a bottle with a nozzle.

Here is the 'after' pictures. The first is supposed to be just colorful.

The ones in the bathtub were supposed to be golden/rust colors on the left, and then, if you can see how the yarn is laid out, a mixture of longer and shorter color changes on the right.

Beautiful in theory.

Theory is probably where Dexter lives.

To be continued....