Friday, November 10, 2006

Adventures in Crockpot Dyeing

I decided that I wanted to try dyeing some yarn, it seems like such a fun thing to do. I had some Lionbrand Fisherman's wool that I thought I'd try first. I did order some yarn from Stickchick
the other day, to dye, once I try out a few things on the Lionbrand. Here is a short photo journal of what I'm doing.

First I wound about half of the skein into this:





Next the yarn is "wetting" in my kitchen sink. It really swells up and smells like a wet dog !

Here's the yarn after I squeezed out the excess water.


I'm using just regular old food coloring that I had on hand. The technique I'm using is "crockpot" dyeing that can be found on Bella Online. I wanted to try the rainbow method, but the colors started to run together, so I stopped with just blue and red. The result is what appears to be a really dark purple.


Now I'm in the "cooking" time of 2 to 4 hours using my flea market find crockpot. I only paid $1.00 for it, it is a bit small, but perfect to try out this technique. Oh, the wooden spoon was .25 from someone else at the flea market.
So now we wait...........................................................

to be continued when the yarn is done.............................

(more experiments to come using Kool Aide and the microwave)

2 comments:

Deneen said...

I can't wait to see it. I have found that LB Fisherman's has the "wet dog" mell much more than other brands I have dyed. I also tend to use water and vinegar for the initial soap, add some to the dye also and then rinse and use a drop or two of Lavender oil or hair conditioner in the final rinse-this helps eliminate the vinegar smell-although sometimes, nothing helps.

I wondered too about the rainbow dyeing in the crock pot. I have done it in the micro, but thought I would do one single color for the crock pot because I didn't know how to keep it from mixing.

I just picked up a little crock pot (probably the same size as the one you have) at a yard sale specifically for dyeing too.

I'm excited for you.

naomi said...

Thanks Deneen for the tip, I'll try adding some fragrant oil to the rinse.