Dyed Socks

Happy New Year!

This past Tuesday, I went to Olbrich Gardens to see their poinsettia and train display in Madison with my mother, Vicki, and Mark. To my surprise, I got a sock kit where I could dye the yarn from Vicki and Mark. I was really excited and thrilled. The kit is called Spiral Socks Kit from Knit One Crochet Too and I got the Fawn color.

I sort of deviated from the directions as to how to dye my yarn (where to place the dye color) and followed a Knitting Daily TV by Interweave Knits way of dyeing yarn to get a variegated pattern, instead of a striping effect.

I mixed my dye accordingly as to what the directions stated, although for my project, I used about a cup per skein, except for the strawberry mixture, I used two cups per skein:
Color 1: water, rose, vinegar
Color 2: water, lime + rose, vinegar
Color 3: water, strawberry + lime, vinegar

So this is how it went:

Unwinding the balls of yarn. I also tied the yarn up in two places. This yarn does have 1% spandex and surprisingly, it stretches quite a bit. With that in mind, follow what Elizabeth Zimmermann would say (from the Knitting Workshop) and be careful not to stretch your yarn when winding it and for this case as well, unwinding it. When push comes to shove, if you wound your ball up too tight, it will effect the tension when knitting, so you want to wind it up loosely, so it won't be too tight. Elizabeth Zimmermann could explain it better. I ended up watching her DVD's during my fall break and got them from my library.

Soaking the yarn in warm water for 30 minutes

Mixing the dye. Note - for this part on wear crappy clothes and gloves.

Dyeing the yarn. I ended up going in order from Color 1-3 when doing this. So I first went around and used color 1, and then did color 2, etc. I also used an old turkey baster for this since I didn't have any squeeze bottles and I think it worked out nicely. It is also a nice cheap method. After I was done with a color, I just rinsed the turkey baster out a few times with clean water to remove some of the excess dye that may have lingered inside.

It's important to blot after dyeing each portion so the dye doesn't run down the plastic wrap and effect the rest of the yarn that wasn't dyed yet. You can see on the right, dye started to run down and dye the portion of the yarn where I didn't dye it yet.


I ended up squeezing excess water out before microwaving it, otherwise it's so saturated with water.

Microwaved yarn for 5 minutes vs non-microwaved yarn

Yarn cooling after it's been microwaved

Yarn after it's dried on a drying rack for a night.

What it looks like in a hank:

And, finally, all balled up.

So I have two balls of Soxx Appeal in a "Sunset" colorway. Note, I started off with Fawn, and looking on the Knit One, Crochet Too website, my yarn sort of looks like the Raspberry Sundae note on the sort of.