I just wanted to dye..........again

Sunday was the much anticipated dyeing day which my friend Lynne and I had planned for some weeks.  She came to my house and we had a lovely time, and made a fabulous amount of mess in the process.  This was one of the few days in the year when I was glad to own black kitchen worktops and black laminate flooring.  :) 

I had some pink laceweight that I wanted to overdye because I had enough for two or three shawls and would not want that many pink shawls the exact same colour.  Unfortunately, every colour I tried over the pink came out purple.  I have a lot of purple yarn too so purple wouldn't have been my first choice.   But at least it is variegated purple and pink, and thus different to all the other pinks and purples I have.  The end result is the middle skein in the photo.

I also split a 100g skein of undyed alpaca lace in half so I could make small shawls in different colours.   

I am not sure what devil told me to paint one of them red and blue (given that this mixes to make flipping purple) but I did and it was a horrible mess.  So I overdyed it again.  The only colour that I was sure wouldn't ruin the yarn entirely was.... hot pink.... so there you go.  Two out of the three skeins ended up pink/purple/red when these were the very colours I DID NOT WANT.  What a genius I am.  This is the skein at the back of the shot. 

The third skein also started off well but deteriorated. 

I created, though I say so myself, the most wonderful skein of turquoise yarn.  My friend and I both stood and marvelled at this yarn.  It came out exactly how I wanted it to.  It was a lovely dark turquoise at one end, then it was gradually lighter until there was only a touch of turquoise at the end.  It was a thing of wonder to me that it had come out so well.  It was instantly copied by my friend.  And then in an attempt to keep the light bits and the dark bits separate, one of us came up with a plan to roll the skein in clingfilm like a sausage, and cook it that way.  This method does not work.  This method is the furthest away you can possibly get from a method that works.  We did use microwavable cling film.  But I think that means you can put it on top of food... I doubt the manufacturers intended you to turn the end of it over the yarn, then start rolling it up like a swiss roll in its paper, and cooking yarn in the microwave with it.   The cling film melts into itself and sticks together.  Mercifully it didn't melt onto the yarn, but we weren't sure that it hadn't... so we were both tearing at this sausage of boiling hot plastic, yelping and cursing at the heat and the hideous mess of it all, whilst desperately trying to release the yarn from its prison.  And of course all the dark bits and all the light bits just ended up covered in dye as we fought to free it.  And my gorgeous skein (which I now really wish I'd taken a picture of so I could prove how lovely it was) was now a very nice, but decidedly unvariagated, turquoise all over.  Its perfectly nice.  But its NOT the thing of wonder that I designed.  Waahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!  But at least it didn't end up totally ruined.  And one good thing came out of this.  My friend had not cooked her turquoise skein.  So she did the sensible thing... and unrolled her uncooked skein carefully, putting it in a pot with the light part at the top, well away from the nasty dark dye that was leaking from the dark parts, and cooked it that way.  So hers came out a bit more variegated. 

The yarn at the back of the shot will probably become the Monkey of the Month item for April.  I will be using a pattern designed for sock yarn, but knitting in lace weight.  I hope that this will result in a small neck shawl but am not really all that sure what size the end result will be. 

None of the yarns are quite as luminous as the photo suggests.  I am currently using the camera on my tablet and clearly I don't quite have the hang of getting the photos right with it yet.