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!
That is a very cool idea. Now I need to find some undyed yarn to play with!
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Opal @ThreadLover Reply:
September 2nd, 2016 at 8:51 am
It’s a wonderful project and I was pleased with the results. I hope you are also. 🙂
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I thought it was tea dyed at first. 🙂
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Opal @ThreadLover Reply:
September 9th, 2016 at 4:37 pm
Tea dye is on my list. I’m in a spinning study and we focus on different techniques/breeds each month. 🙂
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It is so incredibly cool that you know how to do this! I have no color sense whatsoever. Utterly helpless, am I!
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Opal @ThreadLover Reply:
September 23rd, 2016 at 6:33 am
I’m really enjoying it immensely. This is the first year that I’ve actively dyed anything. I still have a lot to learn, but I’m enjoying the process. 🙂
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