Solar dyeing and summer heat

A few days ago, I pulled my last skein of handspun mohair off of my two yard Niddy Noddy and proceeded to dye all the handspun yarn.

If you’ve made ‘Sun Tea’ the process is similar, of course instead of tea (unless you’re using that to color the yarn) you use a dye.

I normally use natural dyes for my handspun yarn, but this time I used Wilton’s icing colors. It’s a food coloring, mainly used to tint icing. I used vinegar to set the color.

I will say that my handspun mohair yarn took the dye well and left the variegated pattern that I wanted. Listening to my daughter’s suggestion I went with an orange/copper base and I added a goldenrod yellow also. I have yellow undertones in my skin and I thought this would compliment it nicely.

A few evenings ago, I went outside and removed the handspun yarn from the glass jar. The water was warm, I rinsed off the water, removed the excess water into a towel and hung the yarn outside on a rack to dry.

The shimmer and the halo that mohair possess was still in the yarn. That’s good, it’s the main reason I chose mohair to complete the project for the knitting designer.

Now, the only thing left is to allow this to completely dry and then begin knitting. Unless of course… I want to overdye the yarn. We’ll see!