A Spot of Dyeing

This is a quick post while my banana bread (for work tomorrow) is in the oven- check me out, a domestic goddess!? I don't think so- it's one of only two things I ever bake and only when the bananas are so black there's nothing else to do with them, I can't bare the waste of throwing them out!

This weekend with weather being so lovely of late I decided it was time to dye a dress I had been meaning to do since last Summer. As it's mainly viscose with a little Lycra, I used my go-to-dye, Dylon Hand Dye, in my favourite colour- burlesque red (which is actually more of a purple).

The instructions state that one pack dyes 250g to full shade or larger amounts to lighter shade; the dress weighed 350g so I decided to use two packets for a nice intense colour.

Once the dress was in and the dye was doing it's stuff I felt like I was not getting my money's worth so looked around for something else to put it... 
A couple of 50g balls of Sidar Sunseeker Cotton Chainette, a 100% cotton DK yarn, caught my eye.

As it was all a but last minute, I decided to be a little experimental and didn't bother to unwind the balls as I have done previously when dyeing yarn. Instead I soaked both balls as they were in warm water as per the packet's instructions,

I then skewered (love that word) both on a long knitting needle and suspended them over the dye so only half was submerged. I had to poke the bottom of them a few times and gave them a few good squeezes to try to get the dye to go right to the centre.

Once done, after about 2 hours, I removed them from the dye and rinsed them out really well with cold water.

After squeezing them out I popped them into a pair of tights and put them in the washing machine with a dark load (along with the dress) and then hung them both out to dry.

This was the end result....

Once I unwound it to make sure it was dry through, which they weren't quite, I discovered the dye had penetrated quite well even in ball form (there's no scale in the photo, so it's hard to tell, but the ball below is about 85% unwound).

And this is both balls completely unwound.

I would recommend unwinding yarn beforehand if you decide to do a spot of dyeing and want a predictable result but in a push I think this way works. I'm looking forward to seeing how it knits up.

Until next time, craft in earnest! Craftin' Ernest x