Works in Progress

I'm dyeing some Euroflax linen that I bought two years ago at Stitches. It was one of those drunk-with-yarn/bonding-with-your-fellow-knitters moments, where I was standing in a booth and a woman taking a MaggiKnits workshop persuaded me to the beauties of Euroflax. The part that I can't remember is why I bought the yarn in the natural, undyed shade. I love the look of it, and I love the swatch that I knit and then machine washed and dried - magic, as the yarn turns from a stiff string into drapeable, tangible fabric. But the color, not so much.

So onto one of my favorite games: mix up some dye and see what happens.

Here's my extremely scientific method:

Soak the yarn in water with soda ash. Mix some Dyelon fabric dye from Hobby Lobby (it's Procion MX under a different brand name) with urea water. I added 8 tablespoons of turquoise, 1 of royal blue, and then a smidgen of navy. I'd planned to paint the skeins. Even had the table covered with newspaper and the plastic wrap laid out, and three different dilutions of the stock solution mixed into plastic cups. I filled a plastic syringe with the darkest dye and started to squirt it onto the skein, and thought, no way, too fussy. Instead, I dumped all three skeins into my dyepot, poured all three cups of dye onto the skeins, added enough water just to cover. Oh, and then I noticed that there was some dye powder gunking up the bottom of one of the cups, so I added some water, mixed it up, and poured that on top. Covered it all with plastic wrap and left it to sit until tomorrow.

My hope is that it turns out like a skein of Malabrigo: various hues of the same color with just enough variegation to keep things interesting, but not so much that I need to work with two skeins at once.

Parker and I are now off the the ice cream place for a hot fudge sundae for me. If my husband arrives home from his fishing trip while we're out, we've left a note and his new, hand-knit socks.