Fiber Fun Friday -- Hand Painting Sock Yarn

Ok, we all know I love color and we know that I love dyeing, but every time I try a new dyeing technique I love it all even more!

This week's experiment was hand painting yarn.

I recently bought 4 skeins of merino/bamboo sock yarn. It's so shiny and soft and wow! Very nice yarn. It was so nice in fact that I was mildly terrified to even think about dyeing it.

I got over the jitters and grabbed my absolute fave book for directions.

After soaking the skeins for a few hours, I covered the counter with plastic wrap and laid one skein out. Using little sponge brushes I painted the dye onto the yarn being careful not to overlap the colors. It's actually a pretty easy process and not that messy. I did wear latex gloves though, just in case.

After making sure the entire skein was colored, I sprayed it with my acid water (water and citric acid mixed to a 3.7ph) I sealed it in the plastic wrap and rolled it up into a bundle.

I put a pie plate in the bottom of my dye pot and put about an inch and a half of water in the bottom (you don't want the water to touch the yarn packet).

I set the yarn on top of the pie plate and proceeded to steam the packet for 45 minutes, flipping it over about half way through.

After the yarn cooled, I opened it up, gave it a quick rinse and hung it to dry.

This was by far the least messy dyeing process I've tried and it used little water. Actually, it was so easy that I might even let the kiddos dye a skein this way. Who knows what fun color choices they may come up with.

This is the first skein I painted.
I had so much fun, I had to do it again so these are the other 3 still in the process of drying.