Dyeing Sock Blank with Easter Egg Dye

I took a class on dyeing yarn because I was intrigued by the process.  I read somewhere too that yarn could be dyed with Easter Egg dye tablets, so that seemed like a decent experience.  I ordered a sock blank on a bit of a whim and decided that now was as good a time as any to try at-home dyeing with dye tablets.  And because it took me a number of Google searches and some trial-and-error to work this out, I figured I would tell others how I did this.  Note that I also dyed eggs with the dye, though you could easily skip that step. So behold! How to dye a sock blank with Easter Egg dye!

You will need:
*Yarn or sock blank to dye (I used the bare sock blank from Knitpicks, available here)
*Easter Egg dye tablets (I used PAAS)
*Clothes you wouldn't mind being splattered with dye
*Hard-boiled eggs
*Water
*White vinegar
*Measuring cup
*Tablespoon measuring spoon
*Cups for dye-mixing and egg-dyeing (capacity at least 1 cup)
*Latex gloves
*Large bowl or bucket for soaking
*Squeeze bottles (one for each color of dye you intend to use)
*Plastic cling wrap
*Vinyl table covering
*Flat surface in a well-ventilated area
*Gallon-sized zippered plastic bag
*Microwave
*Towels or salad spinner
*Place to dry yarn

1. Assemble all the things you will need in your well-ventilated area.  I used a plastic card table set out on my patio.  Cover your table with the vinyl table covering.








2. In your large bowl or bucket, mix about 6 tablespoons of water with about 6 cups of water.  Drop in your yarn or sock blank and press the yarn or blank into the water-vinegar mixture.  Note that, if you are using yarn, it needs to be wound in a large loop (most bare yarn will come this way) and tied every few inches to prevent mess while dyeing.  Since I used a blank, I just dropped it in.

Allow your yarn or blank to sit until bubbles stop coming out of it.  Most sites say 20 minutes for this.  I don't think it really takes that long, but in the meantime I dyed eggs.

3. Mix the dye tablets with vinegar and then water according to package directions.  I mixed tablets with 3 tablespoons of vinegar and then added 1/2 cup water once the tablet was dissolved.  Dye eggs normally, according to package directions and your own preferences.

I only had 6 egg cups, so I decided on my color palette before actually mixing the dye.  I went with purple, denim, teal, green, and spring green for the blank.  The red was just to have a sixth dye.

4. Because it was difficult to tell the difference between the similar color in the egg cups, I ended up laying out the dyes and eggs as a color palette.  The eggs also give a decent idea of what the dye will look like on the yarn, so they can help give you an idea of how your colors will look together.

5. Once your eggs are dyed and the bubbles have stopped appearing from your yarn or blank, you are ready to dye the yarn.  Remove the yarn or blank from the water-vinegar mixture and CAREFULLY squeeze out as much liquid as possible.  Be sure to treat your yarn gently in this stage, as wool is delicate when wet.  Do not wring out your yarn or pull it strongly.

Your yarn should be damp when you apply the dye.

6. Put on your latex gloves.

Carefully pour the dye from the cups into the squeeze bottles.  You can use a funnel for this, but I didn't.  Be sure that you know what dye is in what bottle.  For mine, I made sure to place the squeeze bottle in the same palette position (next to the appropriate dyed egg) as the cup was.  Tightly screw lids onto squeeze bottles.

7. Cut a piece of plastic cling wrap long enough to go under your yarn or blank.  Spread cling wrap flat on your work surface.

Spread your blank or yarn out on the plastic cling wrap.  My table ended up being shorter than my blank, so I folded the blank in half.  By putting the two unravel edges together and matching the edges, I will end up with a blank that is dyed in a mirror-image.  Be sure not to stretch the yarn out too much.

8.  Squeeze dye onto the blank or yarn in your desired pattern.  I worked from the unraveled edges up, but any way is fine.  Squeeze on one line of color and work it in by patting with your fingers.  The dye might spread a bit as you pat, but that is fine.  Be sure not to put too much dye on at once or your stripes will spread and grow as you pat the color in.  Apply extra dye as needed to fill in any lighter areas, but always be sparing with your dye.  More dye doesn't always equal more color; it can just mean more mess.

9. Continue applying dye stripes until you reach the end of the blank or yarn.  I had plenty of dye for a whole blank from 5 tablets.

You might notice as you dye that the stripes aren't blending as you like.  I ended up overlapping the colors a bit to give a "blending" look, but the stripes originally were fairly distinct.  My dyeing class taught me that this is not uncommon with superwash yarn.  The colors might also look unexciting on the blank or yarn, but this will change once the dye is set.  For example, you can't really tell which stripe at the left is purple but don't worry, it will come out later.

10. Once your whole blank or yarn is dyed, roll it up so that the like colors are together.  During the setting process dye can migrate, so you want the like colors next to each other for this.  For my blank, I rolled it up lengthwise so that the stripes were all lined up together.

Use the plastic cling wrap under your yarn or blank to help you roll up your project, then wrap the project in the cling wrap.  You might get some dye seepage around the cling wrap, which is why your work surface should be covered with something waterproof like vinyl.

11. Roll your project roll up like a coiled snake.  This should give you a compact round coil to heat for the setting process.

12. Place the yarn or blank project coil in a zippered plastic bag.  The bag should be plenty large to fit your project.

At this point, you can take off your latex gloves.  I also started cleaning up my work area once I had the dye heat-setting.

13.  Place the zippered bag with your project on a plate in your microwave.  Be absolutely certain that your bag is NOT zippered closed.  Heating your yarn or blank with produce a great deal of steam and you want all of that steam to escape.

Microwave your dyed project on high for 4 minutes.  Allow it to cool enough until you can touch the bag, then flip the zippered bag over and microwave for 4 minutes more.  Your yarn is done once you can press it and not see dye pool.  If needed, flip again and microwave again until no dye pools when pressed.

14. Allow the dye project to cool until you can handle it safely.  I cannot stress enough that your yarn project will be extremely hot and will smell like hot vinegar.  This is normal, but I recommend having your window open while you microwave and cool your yarn or blank.  Also, be aware that your microwave will smell like vinegar for a couple of uses, but it will fade.

While the dyed yarn is cooling, fill your large bowl or bucket with water. See Note on Step 15 for information about water temperature.

15. Take the yarn out of the plastic zippered bag and begin to remove the plastic cling wrap.  My yarn blank was still pretty hot, so I removed the yarn from the cling wrap directly into the bucket.

Note that your water temperature will depend on your yarn.  If you are using superwash yarn, any water temperature will do.  If you are not using superwash, your water MUST be the same temperature as the yarn to start or your yarn will shock and felt.  For non-superwash yarn, you need to start with hot water, then cool the yarn with progressively-cooler water.

16. Allow your yarn to sit in the water until the yarn is completely cooled.  I left mine for about 30 minutes in cool water.  Move the yarn or blank around in order to rinse it thoroughly.  You are trying to cool the yarn down and also rinse the vinegar out of the yarn.  If your yarn still smells like vinegar after one rinse, rinse it again in clean water.

17. Dump the water out of your bucket or bowl and squeeze the yarn.  Like last time, you want to do this without wringing or stretching.  I used a towel to squeeze out water, but a salad spinner would also work.  With the towel I laid the towel out, rolled the yarn up in the towel, then stepped on it to squeeze out yarn without stretching.  For a spinner, place the yarn or blank in the basket and spin until water stops coming out of the project.

18. Hang your yarn up to dry on a water-resistant bar.  Your yarn can dry overnight or take a number of days to dry, based on temperature and humidity.  Be sure to move it periodically so the yarn does not stretch and so it dries evenly. Also be sure to put something (newspapers, towel) beneath the yarn to catch drips.  Since it has been saturated with water, the project will drip water for a while no matter how well you dried it before hanging.

Baby blankets seem like such a good idea

I am one of those people who doesn't like to make the same pattern twice, unless there is some reason to do so.  So even though I like all the baby things I have made before, when Husband told me one of his coworkers was having a baby, there wasn't really a go-to pattern that I immediately pulled out.  We debated for a bit about what to give and ultimately decided on a baby blanket because it would be in use longer than any article of clothing.

We also debated patterns and then colors for a bit and ended up with the Honeycomb Stroller Blanket from Ravelry.  The pattern looked easy enough but still interesting and it allowed for multiple colors, something I liked.  Based on the projects listed using the pattern, I decided on four colors of the Knit Picks Swish DK: Lotus, Carnation, Peapod, and Marble Heather.  This gave me two shades of pink (coworker is having a girl) and a good bright green as well as a grey to tone it all down.  I picked Bark (dark brown) to do the honeycomb parts and the border, which I think makes it look pretty modern.

The pattern and the yarn work alright together.  The yarn is thicker than the pattern called for (pattern was for sport, supposedly) and I am knitting it on 8s, which is smaller than the pattern called for (10s), and I still find the knitting to be plenty loose.  I pull my yarn really tight, so 8s for me are probably the same gauge as 7s for other knitters. It looks nice so far.

Here's my beef with this project, though: it's taking a really long time.  I work full-time, so I only knit in the evenings really. Even on that time frame,  I can usually knock out a smaller project (a pair of socks, mittens, booties, etc) in about a week or so.  I have been knitting on this baby blanket for 3 weeks now and it still isn't done.  Not even just the border isn't done, the blanket part itself isn't done.  I am overall used to knitting being instant-gratification, so doing a project that takes this long isn't sitting very well with me.  Right now I am about half done with the sixth color repeat (people knitting with this yarn in this pattern tell me I can expect seven color repeats) and I frankly can't wait for this project to be done.  It isn't even that my next project will be that exciting; I just want to finish this one.

At least the baby the blanket goes to isn't due until June.  If the blanket is going to take a month to make, at least I started it early enough that the month isn't pushing it.

Spring!

2011-2012 has been a really strange winter around my area.  We normally have very hard winters, but this year there has hardly been a week without 1-2 days in the 40s.  There have been a few impressive rain storms that would have been serious snow had they been snow, but overall we are warm and entering spring with a drought.  This weather is confusing to me and it certainly seems to be confusing to my bulbs, which are now sprouted 1-2 inches tall around my house.  This is very strange for March.

Anyway, seeing these sprouted plants makes me focus on spring crafts.  I finished my lacework scarf that I had been working on for a while and won't get the yarn order for my next project until tomorrow, so a filler project is in order.  Perhaps multiple filler projects.

I decided to make the Egg to Bird and Nest pattern from my craft library.  Since it is small, it probably won't take that long.  In fact, I knocked out the white egg portion yesterday in about 90 minutes and am now almost done with the bird body.  I originally wasn't planning on making the nest, but it seems like I will have time so I might as well.  This project will be an Easter gift for my niece, who will be 8 months old by then.  I know that she will be too young to turn the egg into a bird and back again, but I thought she would enjoy watching someone else do it.  Plus I really like giving knitted toys to babies, since they don't have small parts to detach and they are soft (and, depending on the yarn, washable). 

Aside from small projects simply taking less time, this one will also (hopefully) use up stash yarn.  Originally I bought Knit Picks Swish Worsted for a baby hippo I made for a friend's baby.  I had a bunch of Dusk (navy) and Serrano (red) left from that project, so I bought White and used it for the Olympic Hat for my husband.  That used all the Dusk, but I now have White and Serrano left.  Making the egg almost took all the White and now I am hoping to have enough Serrano left to make the whole bird.  The nest will be Wool of the Andes leftover from socks I made for Christmas gifts, which I am also hoping to have enough of to finish.  Stash knitting can be very stressful.

Lacework

I just finished a class on yarn dyeing and lacework.  While I really enjoyed the dyeing portion of the class, the lace knitting was slightly less fun.   The pattern was the Leaf Lace Scarf on Ravelry and I made it out of the Bare Laceweight yarn from Knit Picks.  Since the class also included dyeing yarn, I dyed this myself.  It is yellow with orange and green (we decided it looked an awful lot like rainbow sherbet), mostly because those are nice bright colors that I like.

I certainly didn't pick a difficult project, but I just don't really think I am a lace sort of person.  The project I picked was probably the least lacy I could have picked, without borders or anything, and I am still not sure it will ever get worn.  There is certainly no judgement toward people who do enjoy lace, but that really isn't me.  I don't wear shawls ever, and shawls seem to be the most interesting lace patterns.  In all honesty, I could see myself at some point making a shawl just because they are pretty, fully knowing I will likely never use it.  I also have never worn a cowl and can't imagine a situation when I would.  I consider "dressed up" to be khakis and I think a job interview was the only time I wore hose all last year.

So I don't know how much I will really do with lacework.  I consider no new skill to be a waste, though, so I'm sure I will have all kinds of fun with the skills I learned in class.

In the meantime, the pre-blocked scarf is pictured on the left.  I will try to post about my adventures in blocking after I get my Knit Picks order this weekend and have actual blocking supplies.