My first yarn dyeing adventure!
I had 10 balls of white Heirloom Merino Magic in my stash which I bought off eBay and i didn’t really know what to do with it. Until an apple fell on my head and I thought, “Why not dye it?”.
Following the many instructions littered all over the World Wide Web, I first unwound the ball of wool and skeined it by winding them around two chairs placed apart.
Then I tied them up in many places with scrap cotton yarn. Incidentally, I used Heirloom 8 ply cotton. I used white so that it wouldn’t decide to bleed should it not be colorfast.
Then I soaked it in 3 parts of water to 1 part white distilled vinegar (acid helps absorb the dye) for 40 minutes. I actually was vacuuming the house while waiting. Some people soak their yarn overnight but I guess you’d have to soak it for at least 20 to 30 minutes.
I used Kool-Aid which I bought from an El Salvadorian food store. So it’s called Chibola instead. I wanted blue dye but alas, the one in the blue packaging turned out to be pink (fruit punch flavor) instead. Vicki, a new friend I made from Ravelry, told me that I should look at the picture of the jug/ glass on the packet. It would show what color the drink/ dye would be. True enough, it’s pink. Not blue.
I also used purple, because Nad wanted to try the grape flavour last night and it turned out to be horrible. So I used it for the dyeing process instead.
I poured the dye mix into individual pots over the stovetop and added 1/3 length of yarn into each pot. The last third was placed in an empty pot. I wanted 1/3 purple, 1/3 pink and 1/3 white.
I did not boil the dye mix first as I did not want to shock the yarn. This is a superwash yarn but still, I’d want to take some precautions.
I turned the heat to a low setting and let it simmer. I also added some vinegar water from the pre-dye soak (save water and vinegar!) just enough to cover the yarn. As most tutorials would have mentioned, it does not matter how much water you use but how much dye. Unless you are mixing more than a few colors in the same pot, then you would want less water so that the dye would not ‘travel’ too much and overmix, resulting in ugly colored yarn.
For the parts in between the two pots, I had to manually scoop dye water to drench the white areas.
You can see the dye being absorbed as the color of the water becomes clearer.
In this photo, the dyepot has been exhausted and the water runs clear. That’s when I turned the heat off. It took about 25 minutes to absorb all the dye. The water was just simmering and not boiling. I guess you have to keep it under boiling point.
I let the yarn sit till the water cooled down, before rinsing with wool-wash detergent and pressing out any colors. Remember to wait till the water cools before adding any cool water to the yarn because extreme temperature changes might shock the wool and cause it to felt. Again, this is superwash wool which would probably not felt but I’m not taking risks!
The water ran clear which meant that the wool took in the dye fast and well.
I gently squeezed the water out. You may want to roll it in a spare towel to press out excess water. Then I hung it on the clothes line to dry.
It didn’t take long. It was rather windy and sunny today. 
Then, I wound it into a very very messy ball.
Taa-dah!
That was rather satisfying! My house smells of fruity vinegar now.
Okay……………………. Now I have 1 ball of purple-pink-white merino wool, 8-ply. WHAT DO I DO WITH IT??????
The problem now is that I have to knit up something which would use 105 meters or less. I thought I could knit a pair of Fetching but I just realised that this pattern calls for 10-ply (Aran weight) yarn. 
Any suggestions?
