I have been fascinated by those shawls you see that are dark at one end but fade to light at the other end. And I'd sort of researched how to do it, but it involved knitting a blank on a knitting machine and then painting the blank and then unravelling the blank and then washing the yarn and then balling it back up... and even reading about it was tiring and... I sort of left it. I kept looking the technique up on line in the hope that some sort of short cut would materialise that was easier to do.
When researching for yesterday, I found that easier way. But it seemed a bit bonkers... like it might not work... so the weekend before the dyeing day I thought I'd do just one skein using the method to see if it worked. But it worked very well... so well that I spent an entire day dying the yarn for what will become another blanket. And I've just got the last of the yarns from that day wound up, and here they are. First the photo of them all skeined up. Then what they look like in a centre pull ball. 
The turquoise came out a bit greener than planned, but its still going to be fine for the plan I have in mind. A round blanket that fades from dark red, to pink, to cream to pale turquoise, to dark turquoise, to purple, to red, to purple again, then red again, then cream. I promise the colours aren't as luminously mad as the photo's make them appear. I took the photos in very bright sunlight.
Its a bit labour intensive dying this way but its such fun. You make up a ball of yarn, not a centre pull but an ordinary round ball made over your fingers then built up. The tighter the ball in the middle, the paler the last bit will be. Then soak the ball in water. For an even gradation and colour all the way through, like the pink one in the foreground, soak it for a long time. The red and cream one at the back was the first one I did... I didn't soak it enough so the dye didn't wick very far into the ball.
Then, make up your dye bath on the stove, and put your ball of wool in the dye bath, roll it around to keep it evenly in the dye. Heat up until its just got steam rising and hold it there for about ten minutes. Like cooking a gigantic woolly doughnut or bagel or something. Then take the ball out with a slotted spoon, put the vinegar in the dye bath and mix it up nicely. Then return the ball to the dye bath. It will suddenly start to really take up the dye. Cook till the dye exhausts (runs clear). Put the dye bath somewhere to cool (I put mine outdoors) with the ball of wool still in it as you don't want the wool to cool suddenly and felt. It takes a long time for the ball of wool to cool down. Unwind the cool wool onto a niddy noddy to make a skein. This bit is very wet and messy. I guess you could use a swift but I suspect it would create a shower of water all over the place if you went at any speed with it. The garden may be the right place to do this part (I did mine in the kitchen and got a soggy rug. Rinse and wash your skein and dry it, before balling it back up again into whatever type of ball you prefer. I think my centre pull balls look pretty, so I did that.
OR to make the two colour skeins. Rewind the wet ball into another round ball. I did a red/pink ball first then re-wound it so that the dark red was in the centre, and the palest part was on the outside again. Put it in the turquoise dye bath, proceeded as above. You don't really know what result you will get until you unwind the ball. I'm pleased with mine and I think it will work for what I designed it for... though when I'll get time to actually knit it up I'm not certain.
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