Dyeing Wool Yarn

After seeing the process of "painting" wool yarn on various blogs and in an old issue of Living Crafts magazine, the girls and I decided to give it a try using food coloring.

First I put a few "glugs" of vinegar in a large pan with water and heated to near boiling.  I added each skein of yarn for a minute to soak, one at a time and placed on towels on our table.  In most tutorials I have noticed they used plastic, but we didn't have any, so there was a bit of a mess under the towels when we were done.

I took the hot water/vinegar from the pot and poured a some in six bowls and then added about 8 drops of food coloring total to each bowl to make red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.  

Next we spooned the color on each of our skeins of yarn.

I then heated up about 1" of water in a large canning pot and then put the bottle (canner) holder over the edge of the pan and when the water came to a boil, I carefully put one of the dyed skeins of yarn around (in) the jar holder, then put the cover on to steam the yarn for about 3 - 4 minutes.  Next, the yarn was removed to cool down and then I rinsed it under lukewarm water and wrung it out then hung to dry.

Abby winding up her yarn.

Her finished yarn

Sarah finger knitting with her yarn.  She wants to double finger knit it to make a jump rope.  Her dad will help her make some branch handles.

My finished yarn.

The colors came out a bit faded, but it was a fun process.  It sure makes me appreciate those that make truly beautiful hand dyed yarns such as The Sitting Tree, Springtree Road, Sweet Basil Fibre Works, and Brambleberry Yarns.