Glazed : Over-dyeing Too-Bright Yarn

I LOVE the way this came out! It has a wonderful luster / shine to it -- almost like graphite. 


I watched one of Rebecca's videos from ChemKnits / Dye Pot Weekly about this glazing and resist dye process, and I was intrigued.  This was something I wanted to try ...

I had to go out and purchase a skein of too-bright wool yarn because it's just not part of the color palettes I am comfortable with.  This rainbow yarn is what I started with.  I know--Too much.  But I knew I'd be able to tame it with this technique.

The first thing I did was to wind it into a skein, then tied off certain parts that I wanted the black dye to resist.  In theory at least, the black dye should not penetrate the parts tied off in white acrylic yarn. 

Since I don't have black acid dye (yet) and Wilton's black food color is not great for this application, I went over to my friend Lynda's house to do the dyeing.  With her methods, she mixes up the dye (including black), then we mix the desired colors we want.  She uses large canning jars  and a huge pot (for canning) to set up a double boiler system that prevents the wool yarn from felting due to the bubbles in the boiling water.    There's really no consistent measuring.  First you put a splash of vinegar in the canning jar, then some dye, then stuff in some yarn, then more dye, then more yarn -- repeat until the jar is full.  Then you top off the jar with hot water. Cap it up with the lid (rust is welcome), and drop in the pot of boiling water where it bathes for 1 hour or so.  When it's done, usually the water in the jars is clear because the dye gets taken up by the yarn.  Your open it up, and pour out the hot yarn, and rinse with hot water.  Then we drop it in the washing machine for the SPIN cycle only which does a great job of spinning out excess water.  Then it doesn't take so long to dry.

At first, I thought I might have put in too much dye.  The black acid dye is quite strong.  A little goes a long way.  But when we pulled the jar out of the double boiler, the water was nice and clear.

 Here is is just after the spin cycle to wring out excess water.  You can still see some bits of color peeking out from under the black glazing.  In person / In real life, it has a nice luster to it - almost like graphite.  Very pretty.

 

Here it is after winding it into a cake / ball. 

 
From here, I re-skeined it at a different length for the bundle at the top of the page.  That way, the colors line up differently than in the way they were dyed.