Dyeing More Yarn

All right, I'll admit it. Dyeing yarn has become somewhat of an obsession lately. I'm just shopping for solid cream colored yarns these days. I don't even look at colored yarn anymore. Okay, that's not really accurate. After all, yarn is yarn. You HAVE to at least look at it!

I've been wanting to try out this method  of dyeing yarn using ice cubes made out of dye. It will still be awhile before it's warm enough to do any dyeing in the sun. I thought about it and decided I could figure out a way to use that Crockpot. Here's what I did:

First I mixed up my dyes (I used Easter egg dyes for this batch). Then filled the ice cube trays with the dye.

Then froze.

Removed the ice cubes from the tray and arranged half of the cubes (randomly) along the bottom of the Crockpot.

Then, I placed the presoaked yarn hank on top of the ice cubes and topped with the other half of the ice cubes.

Set the Crockpot on low. Put the lid on and let it cook until the ice cubes were melted.

Here's what came out. Not QUITE how I pictured it in my mind! The bottom ice cubes ran together creating a kind of brown color (Note to self....blue+orange = brown). There was also ALOT of cream color. I decided I'd add some green  in the cream color sections.

I mixed up some green dye. Putting it in a squeeze bottle so I could squirt the color right where I wanted it.  Re-soaked the yarn section in plain water and put it back into the Crockpot. Added about an inch of water to the Crockpot and about 3 Tbsp. vinegar to the water. Then, began squirting the dye over the cream sections.

Here's the results of this overdyeing:

Still not quite enough green.....So, I repeated the process of green overdyeing again. Here's the final results:

SO much better! Still, nothing like what I started with (remember the orange and blue). Just remember, you can always adjust the color a little if you keep working with it!