I love variegated yarns but not how most of them
typically pool or flash. I usually paint
my skeins for variegated yarns but wanted to come up with an easier way. So here’s what I came up with and it worked
relatively well for the first time out. There's always
room for improvement but it did give me a variegated fabric without pooling or
flashing, this time anyway. Atleast there's less chance of weird patterning but the final effect will depend on number of cast on stitches and gauge.
First, I wound my yarn into a skein on my DIY niddy
noddy, loosely tied it off to prevent tangling, prepped the yarn by sozzling/rinsing
with a bit of dish soap and soaking in water for atleast an hour while I
prepped the dye bath.
I then hung the damp skein over 3 long knitting
needles, the loops don't have to be perfectly sized lengths. I adjusted the amount of dye
bath in my kettle to allow for a bit less than half of the yarn to be
submerged. Then I lowered the yarn into
the kettle, using the knitting needles as a ‘rack’ to hold the yarn in
place. The level of dye bath can be
adjusted by adding water, while the yarn is not submerged in the dye bath. After most of the dye has been absorbed, I removed the yarn and added more water to raise the mix level to about halfway and relowered the yarn. My theory would've worked but think I had too much dye left in order to get a tonal effect that I wanted.
When the dye had been completely absorbed and set, I removed
the yarn into a dish, let it cool and rehung the yarn over the knitting needles with the already dyed
sections on top. I skewered the end
sections with another knitting needle to hold them up also.
I lowered into the 2nd color dye bath and repeated the
heating process. For this session, I
removed the yarn and added enough water to the dye bath to overlap the colors, then resubmerged the yarn but an undyed section
could be left in the middle for painting with a third color. But I’d need to wrap the whole thing in
plastic wrap and steam to set the color if I painted later. Or the middle section could be left undyed, depending
on the effect and color scheme you want.
Have fun with it!!