The Dye Pot

Tea Rose

Materials

100 grams fingering weight merino (Knitpicks undyed)
PAAS Easter egg dye: 3 tablets of red, 1 of violet
White vinegar
Water

Method

Crock pot

Colorfast?

Yes

Color name

Tea Rose

No detergent or salt were used this time.  The yarn was soaked in tepid water, but not washed, and placed in the crock pot.

About 3/4 cup of vinegar was put into a clear bowl and the dye tablets were added.  You should see this stuff dissolving - it actually fumes and it can make quite a bit of noise too :)  Then water was added and the whole poured into the crock pot.  Stirred things around (carefully!) with my trusty wooden spoon, turned the pot to low and went away for about three hours.

When the dye was exhausted, I let the yarn cool, washed it, squeezed it in a towel and hung it to dry.

This is slated for socks which will be pure luxury given how soft this yarn is!  The swatch was worked on size 2 (US) needles.

Notes:  As with the first merino (the Turquish Delight), there was some slight felting.  What I don’t know is if that’s particular to merino in general, or only to this merino.  In any case, it wasn’t a problem and I consider this my first real success.  This yarn is breath-takingly beautiful and always makes me think that this is what roses would look like if they were made of wool.  I hope very much to be able to duplicate this and try not to obssess too much about whether that’s a reasonable possibility :)

Posted by Robbyn on 05/31 at 01:01 AM