Fun with yarn

It is the summer school holidays here in Australia, and any parent can relate that there are so many activities a child will do before they say "I am bored Mum", usually in a time frame of 1 day.

For a while i had planned to dye some yarn with my daughter as a colour experiment during the holidays. So i done some research on how to dye yarn, as i had never done it before. It was interesting to find some really helpful sites and how to make chemical free yarn dyes. Two great sites are DaisyHead Creations and Knitty

Once i had my research gathered, i took advantage of the Knit Picks sale and bought some Bare wool of the Andes in sport weight. These hanks are quite affordable for someone that wants to dye their own yarn as an experiment or fun with the kids. Each hank has a total of 474 yards/250 meters, which is plenty to make a nice scarf like The Day trip scarf by Zooty owl. (One of my favourite designers)

Now because this is an activity with a child i wanted to make sure this was chemical free. So i bought some food grade colouring (in the cooking isle) and i had white vinegar already at home.

Before we start there are some tools you will need:

• A large tub for soaking the yarn
• A pot or slow cooker
• Cling wrap for painted yarn
• Imagination
• A clothes hanger
• Patience (try telling that to a child haha)
• Yarn swift
• Yarn winder

Above is a collage of the different steps i followed. 

• First, soak your yarn in a tub of very warm water with vinegar (the vinegar acts as an acid base for the yarn) i used the ratio of 1/4 cup vinegar to 4 Litres of water. Soak for a good half an hour to an hour.

• Second, take yarn out of tub, but do not squeeze it. Add your yarn to a pot or any cooking method described in the above linked sites. For this post i am using the pot. I added 3 hanks to my stock pot. Then i poured some of the soak water into the pot (i reused as i used rain water).I then turned the heat on and allowed to heat up until i could see steam but not boiling.The other 3 hanks i had, i used muffin trays as hubby was not impressed with the whole cling wrap on the table.

Now the fun part! Mixing colours.

My daughter and i decided on 5 colours: pink, yellow, blue, teal/aqua and purple. 

Below are the ratios of how much food colouring i used for each colour. This is liquid food colouring so the colours were bound to be different to paste.

With each colour, add 1 tsp of vinegar into the cup before adding the dye and water.

Pink: 3 drops of pink food dye (i used a nurofen syringe) Add water and mix.

Yellow: 3 drops of yellow dye. Add water and mix

Blue: 3 drops of blue dye. Add water and mix

Teal/aqua: 2 drops of blue and 3 drops of green dye. Add water and mix.

Purple: 3 drops of blue and 2 drops of red dye. Add water and mix.

There are many other different colours you can make (which i did not experiment with) and the intensity of the colours too. 

I did have to mix these colours quite a few times to do all 6 hanks, plus having to emergency clean RED food dye off the bench that i accidentally spilled (whoops!)

For the 3 hanks in the pot, i mixed 2 purple, 1 teal/aqua, 1 blue and 1 yellow(all separately of course) Once the water is to temperature i added them gently in areas around the yarn. DO NOT mix the pot once the colours are added.

You may now ask how do the colours not mix together? Well that is the vinegar in the water and colour mixes. From what i understand it helps the colours to pool in the spot you pour them.

I left the yarn on low heat for 20 mins then turned off and allowed for it to cool and wait for the water to be clear (around 5hrs)

Next the muffin pans! 

This was so much fun. Neatly arrange the yarn in the muffin trays so that it sort of bunches in each little cup. As above we made 3 so we were bound to have some unique mixes. We added the colour mixes we wanted by pouring them into the little cups until they were full. once all the yarn and cups have been filled, we then covered in cling wrap so the yarn would not dry out.

Then we waited................ yes i did get pestered when we could rinse the yarn countless times.

Yay, time to rinse and dry.

We rinsed the yarn in cold water then soaked in a 20 minute wool wash bath to take out the vinegar smell. If any colour does run, just rinse until the water runs clear,

Hang up on a clothes drying rack and allow to dry.

Now i am not a pro at dying or twisting hanks, but i love using my yarn winder, and investing in a yarn swift and decent yarn winder has been the best thing i have done. 

To explain how to wind the yarn i recommend watching Mooglys video . I have invested in a similar design yarn winder to Moogly that i got on Ebay for $35. It works wonderfully and i managed to wind all 3 hanks from the pot into 1 ball, 750m in total! 

Ta-Dah you have some yummy, squishy home dyed yarn you made yourself. 

(psst i have already started a Day trip scarf with the top right ball, just could not resist!)

This activity has my daughter begging to do it again, so later on down the track i will look at getting more yarn and dying some more :) 

I hope this has inspired you to play with some colour and get the kids to do a fun activity, but at the same time learning about colours. 

Until next time

Natasha

Buttonnose Crochet