Dyeing variegated yarn with Wilton's

My pal let me know that she received her yarn yesterday, so I can post the stories of its birth.

The first yarn that I attempted (and actually completed) was an orange, brown and green self-striping yarn, detailed in a post I wrote yesterday.

As mentioned, I wasn't thrilled with how tangled it got and how many times I had to re-skein it (and the felting that occurred) so I decided to make a second skein a different way.

I chose colors that I thought might look neat together (all the shades of blue/purple in my Wilton's kit). I washed the yarn (again using Knit Picks' dye-your-own sock yarn) with dish detergent and then soaked it in cool water with vinegar. I prepared three mason jars with the dye (royal blue, sky blue and violet) mixed with vinegar. Then I dunked portions of the skein in each:


I microwaved the whole mass (putting the jars into a pyrex casserole dish to catch overflow first) for five minutes and let it sit until it was room temperature (actually, this one sat overnight). I then rinsed it until the water ran clear and laid it out to dry.

When it was dry, I skeined it with the niddy noddy:

And then made my own labels to send it to my sock pal, along with the self-striping one: