Yarn dyeing in the making!

I am currently, right now, dyeing and bleaching some yarn! Since I was late with St. Patties, I decided to make up for it by doing some green dyeing!

So I recently got around to try the Lemon Lime Kool-Aid, and at first it tasted like a knock-off 7up, but as I kept drinking, it got worse and worse and I couldn't even drink half of the bottle I made (for your information, I make half the package at the time, I just don't have a big enough container). So I put the rest of it aside for some yarn dyeing!

 

And tonight I started it! The yarn I decided to torture today was the Knit Picks Closs DK skein I recieved from Brooke. It's a merino/silk blend and super soft and I kinda want to make myself some fingerless mittens or something like that with it.
I used only half a package + two packages of Lemonade. I wanted a more difuse and spotty greenish tone, so I mixed a little Lemon Lime into the Lemonade and poured it over, then I went over again with the rest of the Lemon Lime and finished it up with the second Lemonade package. Lemonade is super light yellow color and hardly did much to the yarn by itself, so that's why I used double.

Fun times! I'm currently just waiting for it to cool down...and in the mean time, I started bleaching some cotton! I dug through my bag of cotton yarn and pulled out two more Bomull Sport, this time in orange and deep magenta color.

I let them sit for about 20 minutes this time, and the result is much better. It took a while before it started to change the magenta one, but the orange showed some result pretty quickly. In the end, the magenta got a very subtle gradient over to a lighter hot pink while the orange got all firey!

And I decided to do a little experiment at the end. I got three skeins of some cotton yarn I've never used before from Star during LAC's Secret Santa exchange. They're called Bernat Handicrafter Cotton and is alot thicker and more corse than the type of cotton I'm used too. Kinda want to try and make crochet dishcloths with them...

Two shades of green and one variegated. The darkest green seemed a little boring on its own, so why not try and bleach that too? I squeesed out as much of the leftover bleaching liquids from the two Bomull Sport skeins and dipped it in, not expecting the best of results since it was second use bleach. But any result at all would be noteworthy for me, and it would brighten up the color anyway.

It didn't show much promise at first, but when I got to wet the whole skein and rinsing it off, it gave me a kinda camo result. I love it!

I'll probably blog about these to show of the final result when they're all dry and purrty, so stick around! In the mean time, you can read more in detail about Kool-Aid dyeing and cotton bleaching earlier in my blog from the last time I did it!

Bleached and dyed yarn!

Results of my recent yarn dyeing!

The Kool-Aid yarn turned out fantastic! I love the different shades, and as I did say earlier, I did another round of dyeing where I added Black Cherry and a bit of Strawberry Lemonade, and the result was perfect, just like I wanted it! Gonna see if I can make a pair of fair-isle socks with these!

After I did the last round of Kool-Aid dyeing, I did the opposite on some cotton yarn, I bleached it and the result was beyond amazing! So much fun and these will make beautiful dishcloths!

I'll probably do alot more of yarn dyeing and bleaching in the future, so stick around if you've enjoyed this!

Bleached cotton yarn!

I'm having too much fun with yarn this weekend! I did a second dye on the Kool-Aid wool yarn, and I got it JUST like I wanted!

But I also started some other coloring this night! I poured concentrated bleach into glass jars and dipped cotton yarn in them! The effect is AMAZING! Can't believe the results!

Ok, so lets start from the beginning! I just remembered that I saw someone pouring bleach over cotton skeins this last summer and used the yarn for dishcloths. The person had used black yarn and the bleaching made parts of it brown-ish, made for a really cool effect.

So I dug out some cotton skeins, first in three colors, but I ended up using four so excuse me for not including the purple in this picture...it was taken before that decision...and I've allready plumped some of the skeins in bleach allready...

 

 The yarn I'm using is Bomull Sport, which is my favorite cotton to use for dishcloths. 100% cotton. sturdy and purdy!

Ok, so I wanted to try and make the skeins half and half in color, so I needed some kind of glass or plastic vessel so they could stand up right into the bleach. The best ones I could find I could find, wich was the empty glass jars from my Diamon Candle candles, and I could just fit two skeins into each jar! Perfect!

I poured about 50/50 water and bleach into the jars at first, not too much since I knew the skeins would fill them up and I didn't want to have bleach spilling out over the bathroom sink cause I had put too much in there... But stupid me forgot that the yarn is COTTON! WATER ABSORBENT! Stupid me! So I had to pour more and more bleach and water into the jars cause the skeins kept sucking up all the liquids! But I was surprised to see immediant results! The skeins switched colors in front of my eyes and it was beautiful!

The dark green got a gradient of orange, yellow and white, the purple got a beautiful gradient to hot pink, light pink and white, the turquoise turned white and the red turned orange-ish and white! So much fun! I let them sit for about 30 minutes, I could have taken them out maybe 10-15 minutes earlier, I let them sit so long cause I was afraid the bleach wouldn't reach the center of the skeins before I took them out and rinsed them out... I am SO pleased with the result!

 

These will become four fancy dishcloths soon enough!