Friday, August 08, 2008

New Goings On




Well, I'm still dyeing. This time I used Wilton Cake Decorating colors. Now, these are not the ones usually found in grocery stores. These colors are found in cake decorating stores and in cake decorating sections of craft stores such as AC Moore and Michaels. There is a wide variety of colors available, and of course you can mix colors to create your own.

I also tried a new dyeing tool: the slow cooker! Piece of cake. It certainly doesn't get much easier, unless you're using the Kool-Aid "sun tea" method. The only problem I had was keeping the yarn submerged during the first 20 minute soak. I finally put a plate on top of it to hold it down. I'm not sure why this happened, but I think it might have been because there wasn't enough water. I'm using a 4-quart slow cooker, and perhaps I should have gotten a slightly larger one. Another reason could be that I had the skein twisted a bit too tightly, which didn't allow the water to soak through efficiently and sink the yarn. Regardless, I'm happy with the results.

NEW STORE ANNOUNCEMENT

I want to call your attention to a new etsy shop opening at 8:00 PDT on August 8. Dizzy Blonde Studios features a beautiful selection of hand-dyed yarn. You can see closeups of the yarn here. I think we all should do our best to support independent dyers and spinners.

4 comments:

Skein Queen said...

Nice results! I have the same problem with soaking yarn - can be the air content in the yarn depending on the blend. I push it down with a wooden spoon and eventually the water weighs it down itself IYSWIM! Keep dyeing!

BammerKT said...

Where's the Ezine located? I would really love to get a look especially since I'm an indie dyer myself who is struggling to get going. Thanks for supporting your indie dyers!

Ida said...

bammerkt,
The ezines are available only through e-mail subscriptions. To subscribe to either Knitting Purls (which features indie dyers/spinners in November) or Spinning & Dyeing (which launches in December), just send your e-mail address to info@knittingpurls.com. I'll sign you up.

Daniele said...

That came out great! Fill that cooker up to the top when you are putting the dry fiber in! :)

Daniele aka mscreate.typepad.com