I spent part of my Spring Break learning how to dye my own yarn. It’s actually quite easy to dye wool using food dyes, which is a big plus because you don’t have to worry about toxic chemicals and you can use your crockpot again afterwards. So far I have used kool-aid, Easter egg dyes, and regular food coloring, all of which have their pros and cons. At the moment I like Easter egg dyes best, as they have a pretty high dye content, don’t smell like concentrated fruit punch, and don’t make much mess. (Also I picked up a bunch of dye kits for maybe 25 cents each during the post-season sales, making this by far the best deal in terms of cost)
I did the first batch on the stove in the kitchen, but my neighbors didn’t really appreciate the smell, so I started using the crockpot instead. It takes a little longer, but the good thing is you basically can put the yarn in and leave it for long periods of time without having to do anything (whereas boiling on the stove requires constant attention). There is something very cool about dying a batch of yarn while you are in class.
It helps if you can learn not to mind the smell of wet wool, of course.
Anyway, I made nearly twenty shades of green yarn (in tiny little skeins of maybe 30 yards each). The best ones were where I over-dyed yellow or light green yarn. (The problem with food dyes is that the colors tend to be a little bright unless you do something to cut the fluorescence a bit.) The resulting yarn is incredibly vibrant and covers a wide range of greenish colors. I hope to use them to weave a green liturgical stole—I always wanted to weave a stole with lots and lots of different shades of the same color, but it’s difficult to buy yarn that way without spending a small fortune. If this works, I could have an economical, fun, and generally just plain cool way to find materials for stoles.
If we can have liturgically-correct Jello, it seems logical that we could also use the same kinds of dyes to produce liturgically-correct yarn. (This is obviously still a work in progress.)
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Why I have so much green yarn...
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2 comments:
This is really neat! But it does surprise me that you're starting with greens and not reds. I suppose you have an ordination stole already, though. And it will be good to have more than one green one to break up the monotony this year.
The thing is this: I don't have a lot of emotional energy invested in the color green, so if it came out terribly, it wouldn't bother me. I care more about reds. ;)
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