Dying yarn

At the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival on Saturday, Jane and I took a class on dying self-striping sock yarn. Not being a particular fan of self-striping sock yarn, the class title left me less than enthused, but it was open, and something to do for the afternoon.  I was wrong.

First off, the class was taught by Nancy from Nancy’s Knit Knacks, the place where Dan got my amazing ball winder for me a couple of Christmases ago. Nancy is a wealth of knowledge, she started out quiet, but really knows her stuff, and explained all of the math that goes into dying self striping yarn.  Her samples were perfect.

We set about choosing our colors of dye.

And coming up with a plan.  I had to adjust mine, as some of the dyes that I chose were empty.

Then painting the appropriate sections of the yarn that was already pre-wound to the correct skein length.

Edited for clarification:  Nancy pre-wound the skeins.  First you knit 10 rows with your yarn, and figure out how many inches that is in total. You then rewind the yarn to a skein that is that length (it is quite long).  Nancy based her calculations on a 64 stitch sock.  After you figure out what colors you want to use, you need to set up a pattern.  The “Faux Isle” portion needs to be at least 4 rows long if you want to do that.  You can do any combination of row colors to add up to 10 rows.  I chose 2-2-2-4.  Then you measure out the length that you need for each color section and dye that individually.  That section is then placed in its own plastic ziplock back, and saran wrap tied around the end of it (this was the hardest part!).  Continue dying each section and placing in their own plastic bags.  They then get put on a tray with a little bit of water at the bottom for steam and microwaved for 8 minutes.

After they cooked in the microwave, we hung them in the doorway to dry

Then we spread all of them out and talked about our skeins and what we were trying to achieve.

Here is my skein drying

And wound up, waiting to be spun into socks for me.  I am not sure that the “Faux Isle” section of the pattern will show up that much, but I like the colors.  Hopefully it will stripe properly.