Chaos Reborn: Hand Dyeing

Do you ever have a super clear vision of what you are looking for, but nothing is quite there? That is what happened when I was in search of some sport to DK weight yarn in "an unnatural green". Fortunately I found something super close, and I am not afraid to experiment.

Here is what we started with: a skein of Mirasol Yarn Kancha that I picked up at Mind's Eye Yarn. One of the neat things about this yarn is that it is a cotton/wool yarn, but instead of being a blend, it has two plies, one of each fiber. Since the wool would take the acid dye and the cotton would not, this meant I would potentially be able to keep some of the visual texture that I really liked about the original skein.

It was definitely in the right ballpark, but a bit more on the unnatural yellow side compared with what I wanted. So I broke out some Jacquard acid dye in Kelly Green (care of Dharma Trading Company).

I did a couple of tests to see how the dye would take. The mini skein to the left is on the Mirasol Kancha, The center is the same dye bath (same concentration and duration) on a 100% white wool yarn that you see to the right. Fun!

Since I was pleased with the test skein, I went ahead a did the rest of the skein, and the final result looked like this:

In the picture here it looks moderately even, but it has some great tonal variation in person. Super pleased!