Each year longtime friends Cathy [from Denver], Sharon, [from North Plains] and Renee [from Beaverton] and Marilyn [from Wetland Wool in Banks] spend MLK weekend together at Renee’s place at the coast in Manzanita. But this year, with John still in Australia, we made a change. They came and stayed with me at Wetland Wool–or as Renee called it, Wooly Wetland.
Besides eating and shopping, we always do some kind of fiber project. One year it was knitting up and then felting hats in the washing machine, one year it was just knitting, one year it was needle felting. This time, it was dyeing.
I had bought 11 skeins of white wool yarn at various sales. One type was a Red Heart product, Peruvian wool singles [not plied]. Another was from Fred Meyer believe it or not, a Martha Stewart product called roving wool–also unplied singles.
We decided to try dyeing the balls of yarn using the injection method. Sounds scientific, doesn’t it?
We started by soaking the yarn in water with a little vinegar in it. We mixed up Landscapes dyes [my favorite, Australian made and brought back from Sydney] in canning jars and used basters and squirt bottles to inject dye into the balls of yarn. Two minutes in the microwave, two minutes of rest, two more minutes in the microwave. More rest, then a rinse, and they were ready to be hung to dry. Knitted, the yarn will certainly come out looking variegated given all the colors we used.
One photo shows Sharon and Cathy with dyed hands. They did not wear their rubber gloves. Maybe it was because we started this project at 10:00 pm…The other photo shows the dyed skeins. We promised to make something with our yarn and show ‘n’ tell it next year.