One of my biggest hurdles to cross in this game called dyeing is trying to dye a solid color, and I think I may have done it.

Usually, the attempt to dye solids has created rather splotchy results so I have generally avoided trying to do them.  Well, this plus the fact that if people really wanted a solid color they could find it among the plethora of commercial mills.  Even so, sometimes a client will want a variegated yarn with a matching or coordinated solid, so it’s good to know how to do it.

My early attempts were to simply prepare the dye and then apply it to the yarn, in a single solution and single application. I have rarely been satisfied with the results when I did it like that.  What I’ve done this time was to create my dye solution same as always, but apply it in layers, only a light saturation each time.  Each of the yarns below was given 5 or 6 layered applications.

And each application using this technique requires that I lift the hanks up above the workspace to prepare for the next application, usually raising the yarn above shoulder-height.  So it is very wet and fairly labor intensive, compared to some of my other techniques.  If this is all I did for all my dyeing, I would soon have shoulders and upper arms like a linebacker!  As it is, I’m usually fairly wiped out the day after a dye session because of the labor involved, and it takes a day or more to recover.

But that’s not a complaint.   In fact, applying color to yarn is the best part of what I do.  It’s my favorite part.  Unfortunately, actually putting color to yarn is barely 5-10% of what I do.  The rest of the time I am pulling hanks from cones, and preparing the yarns for dye, and washing/rinsing the yarns after dyeing, then reskeining, labeling, and packing the yarns.  They say, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”   That’s just hogwash!  In order to do the parts you love, you have to spend a lot of other time doing the actual work behind it.

So, anyway, here are four 3-skein sets of Mardi Gras colors, done as a custom job for someone.  Normally Phydlbitz Sock is $27.50, but a 3-skein set of Mardi Gras colors can be had for just $75.00.   All you need to do is ask — send me an email (ray@knitivity.com) and let me know how many 3-skein sets you’d like.

Follow

Feeling a little nostalgic this morning, looking back at where I started dyeing, back in New Orleans in the spring of 2006, still reeling from Katrina and wondering if I had what it takes to be a full-time yarn dyer.  Heck, I’m still not sure I can pull it off, but I jumped in feet first and I’m still here.  The industry has changed, and I have tried to change with it.

I won’t comment much on these images, but they are taken from my personal website, so they were before knitivity.com was started.   I can tell from most of the pictures they were taken at the house I lived in on Constantinople St. in New Orleans.   I was still experimenting with Kool-Aid dyeing, along with other types of dyes.

These first images were yarns I dyed with onion skins and black walnut husks, in a stitch pattern I called “Peppercorns” because of how the little dark blips stood out.

And here are some random examples of the early dyes….

Follow