Dyed Alpaca

I tried dying the alpaca again with much better results. This time I just used the microwave, which is by far the easiest way to go. Especially because we got a new microwave for Christmas last year that MEANS BUSINESS!! That sucker boils water in no time! Anyways...I think that the colors that resulted are well worth the apartment smelling like vinegar and strawberries for a day or so.

These are the before and after photos. We went from a country blue to a cyanobacteria green and a sort of rusty purple. The green was done by adding some teal and sky blue food coloring to about a cup and a half of vinegar, and enough water to cover the top of the skein (about 3 cups). The purple was created with a package of strawberry Kool-Aide, which is so acidic that it doesn't need the vinegar. The green one is still pretty uneven, it is the same skein I tried to dye green by just using a package of powdered lemonade...I did this in the crock pot, which just never seems to give me good results.

How do these images look? I just stuck the yarn in my scanner. I think that it is the most color-true way to take an image.

Thanks for reading...I totally need to be writing a paper about the Portuguese Empire right now!

Kno Knew Knitting

Life is really getting in the way of my knitting lately....I'm starting my senior thesis this semester, taking two classes and working three jobs! If only I had somehow incorporated knitting into my thesis....If only I had majored in fine arts! OK, enough of the "woe is me!"

So the leafy scarf is doing really well in etsy. It has had more views than the first things I posted! If anyone is interested in the pattern let me know and I will make a post about it here.

I tried to dye up some alpaca that I bought at a flea market. I was blue, so I dyed it with yellow to make it green. This did not turn out how I planned it! Because the fiber is sort of fuzzy and tends to stick to itself, the yellow dye only got into the very outside and inside of the (loosely wound) skein, leaving the inside blue still. I'm trying to think of ways to fix it...smaller skeins....using a squeeze bottle to inject dye into the middle...hmmm.

Thanks for reading!