A Pound of Merino and a Dyeing Test

4 mini skeins showing dyeing progression

I recently purchased a pound of beautiful fingering weight merino yarn with the purpose in mind to test out some dye techniques and start to develop my own palette to play with.

Here's what this beautiful pile of yarn looked like to start.

I separated it into roughly 35g mini skeins, plus one 100g skein.  I wanted small skeins to play with colour and not waste too much yarn if it went badly.  Also, this is enough to knit a swatch and save a bit with my dye info for reference.

In the first dye pot- I did a low immersion bath with purple, blue, and ecru (which disappeared).  I put all three mini skeins in here.

Sucked up the dye so fast!

Once it was out and dry, I could see what I wanted to change.  Back into the dye pot for two of the skeins- one with a diluted black just to dull out the white areas of yarn, and another in a more concentrated to give an overall more smokey look.

Here's all 4 steps together from right to left- bare, purple and blue low immersion (first step), and full immersion/overdye with light grey and dark grey.  I'm loving the more denim look of the darkest one, which is what I was hoping for.  Interestingly the yarn grabbed the colour immediately in the first skein- there's very little bleeding, well defined edging which I suspect is from soaking the yarn in acidic water as well as acid in the dye bath.  Could work well for some speckling- perhaps that's this weekend's adventure.

Stay tuned for some swatches coming soon.  My evenings are filled with TdF spindle spinning for a Ravelry challenge, then back to some knit time.

Happy knitting!