Recently Laura and I got together for a dye day. It was so fun! I brought my gray heathered yarn and some commercial socks to dye. She had yarn and roving to kettle dye and handpaint.

Laura gets ready to mix up dye:

Here’s me filling up a pot for kettle dyeing:

Presoaking the fiber:

We both used Jacquard Acid Dyes. This is Chartreuse.

Laura dyed silk roving and Knit Picks bare yarn. My white socks are in here too.

I brought Sieben along for a doggie play day. He was SO excited to play with her dogs Bobo and Didi.

Our dye prep area:

Here’s Laura handpainting some mohair roving:

Our friend Meredith had suggested dyeing darker colored yarn. I decided to try it with my gray yarn. Here’s the Chartreuse:

From the left-my socks, Laura’s bare yarn and silk roving.

From the left-her handpainted mohair roving and bare yarn.

I split my yarn into two batches. I’m dyeing the second batch in Kelly Green.

Her metal grid table worked great for laying out the wet yarn.

We learned some things that day. We ended up using too much water and too much dye while kettle dyeing. For the Kelly Green I used less water but forgot to use less dye. Laura liked the way her handpainted roving turned out but didn’t like the look of the handpainted bare yarn.

We also forgot to rinse out our fiber. The smell of vinegar was pretty strong! I rinsed out mine yesterday. More pics in the next post.

The weather was wonderful for a dye day. Sunny, warm, no wind-a wonderful fall day. We had such a good time and will definitely do it again!