Yarn and food coloring
This morning I learned how to dye yarn with food coloring. Libby at Mad About Ewes is thinking of offering it as a class next Fall and wanted to run a test class to see how it would work. So four guinea pigs descended on her shop at 11AM and got their dye on. It was a lot of fun. The only hard part about it was being faced with having to do something with the blank canvas of yarn. I could never be an artist because the blank canvas thing always stresses me out. We had blue, yellow, and red dyes with which to work our magic. With the first skein I went really heavy with the dyes. I used lots of red and blue with a bit of yellow here and there. Yellow isn't my favorite color, but it is the key ingredient to making orange and green, so I really saturated the yarn until I got those two colors, forgetting that the last thing you do before steaming the yarn is cover it in saran wrap, roll it up, and mush the colors together. By the time I finished rolling my yarn, tons of dye had been pushed to the end which meant everything at that end looked brown. I was a little bummed. Libby suggested using less dye on the second skein which I did, but I think I undercompensated because it came out very pastel. I might overdye it sometime. Or I might decide I love it and keep it. The first skein came out much better than I thought. The part that I thought would be brown is more of a brownish red. Very Fall-like colors. Anyway, if you live around here and she offers the class, definitely take it. I ended up leaving with eight skeins of undyed yarn so I can give it another go at home.
