yarn dyeing: an experiment

Short story: my hands are pink.

Long story: I decided to overdye some yarn that I bought. I got this really beautiful peach yarn from The Loopy Ewe for a baby blanket. Well, I'm no longer making the baby blanket, but I wanted to make something for my sister with it, but no one wants a peach garment. So instead of returning it and getting other yarn with it, I decide that I'm going to overdye it RED.

I go over to my friend's house and start playing around with acid based dyes. You basically fill the biggest pot known to man with water, heat the water up. Put the yarn in and make sure it's soaking in there. Mix some of the powder dye and pour it in the pot. Stir things around. Mix together some citric acid. Dump citric in the big pot. Stir things around. Repeat last 4 steps until its the color you want.

Sounds easy, right? Well, it mostly is. Except I had A LOT of yarn in there. And the spoon we were using to stir the pot kept getting tangled in my yarn, so I started just using my hand. My left hand. Well, guess what. Now my hand is pink... AND SO IS MY ENGAGEMENT RING. Don't tell Gzilla...

I'm pretty sure that if I just cleaned the ring really well, it wouldn't be pink anymore. I can't imagine that the diamond itself has been dyed, just some soap scum or dirt or something on the surface of the diamond has been dyed pink.

I don't know how the yarn turned out yet. It hasn't finished drying. It should be dry tonight. Right now it's hanging out on the clothes line in my basement. It's not completely solid, which is what I wanted. Some parts are a bit more saturated than others, and I really like that look. So hopefully my sister will like a red cardigan... because that's what she's getting!