I have a special treat for you today. A chance to play with both yarn and Easter egg dyes that will take you back to a time when you could count your age on your own two hands. Creating hand painted yarn with Easter egg dyes is safe and effective. The dye will wear off your fingers but stay permanent on your yarn! Don't worry about coloring within the lines! Apply your favorite colors in whatever pattern makes you happy. It's playtime, knitters! Here's what you'll need: super-wash wool yarn, or any protein based yarn such as llama, alpaca, silk or milk fiber. *Plant based yarns or acrylics won't work for this project Easter egg dye tablets white vinegar Large pot and … [Read more...]

Easter Egg dyes are the best! So bright and rich, in easy to use little tablets. I always get great results using them. This week, we'll experiment with kettle dyed yarn using Easter egg dye tablets! Since I've started doing this, I've noticed they've begun to make all kinds of deluxe easter egg dyeing kits, but for this, you'll just want the basic dye kit with tablets. Mine had lots of colors, and although it's difficult to tell what color they are in tablet form - all you need to do is dab them on a damp paper towel to see the colors: Kettle dyed yarn is unique in that you can create a deep tonal color by layering several colors on top of one another. You'll be dyeing in your crock pot, … [Read more...]

Don't you love those beautiful round cakes of gradient dyed yarns? They're so lovely! My problem with what's available in craft stores? They're all either acrylic or acrylic blends. When it comes to yarn, I really prefer natural fibers, so I've learned to dye my own wool gradients using easy to obtain sock yarn. For this tutorial I used a white skein of Red Heart Heart & Sole sock yarn.  Gradients can be created with colors that gradually change, such as depth of saturation in one color, as it changes from one color to another, or with related colors as I did above. If you want to do a gradient with depth of saturation changes, simply make different concentrations of the same … [Read more...]

We are celebrating the arrival of spring flowers and colored eggs by learning to dye yarn in our kitchen all month long! Every week we'll post a new technique using fun food-safe dye experiments. Our first technique uses unsweetened powdered koolaid packets. I really love the trendy speckled yarn I see by so many talented indy dyers, and there couldn't be an easier technique to begin with than speckle dyeing with powdered koolaid. Here's what you'll need: latex gloves (those blue nitrile ones give the best protection) a large glass casserole dish plastic wrap white vinegar 4 packets of koolaid in your desired colors (or 1 packet per ounce of yarn) white or light colored … [Read more...]