A fun way to dye wool yarn

Here's the yarn as a reminder as to what I ended up with. This is not a precise way of dyeing, you usually don't get what you thought you might. So think of it as an experiment and then you won't be anything but surprised. The yarn I'm using is a yarn from Knit Picks http://www.knitpicks.com/ the name of it is, Color Your Own, 100% Merino, Natural, 100grams/440 yds. I've used this yarn in the past for making socks, but have found if you don't wash them gently the will felt, also I reinforce the toes and heals with a separate yarn made just for that purpose. So you want to start with making your yarn into two separate balls, don't get fussy with this either, just kind of guess at the evenest. I use a ball winder and a small scale and figure it out by grams. Now the dye I use is made to be used on wool, and I used two different kinds, Jacquard acid and Gaywool acid dye. The supplies you will need, a pan large enough to hold two balls of yarn, this would be a pan that you will never use for cooking again, latex gloves, a stick for stirring, timer, paper towels and vinegar. Now please excuse my pictures, they didn't turn out very well.

Here I am winding the yarn on the ball winder from a swift. You want to try not to wind it to tight, because you want the ball to be saturated with water all the way through. So once you have them wound, now you want to put the yarn in a pan of warm water, covering to the top, now add a little vinegar, this will help the dye stick to the wool. Now soak for a hour or more, if the yarn doesn't feel wet enough. When they have soaked, remove and gently squeeze the water out, you want to keep most the moisture. Now in your dye pan put just enough water to go half way up the balls of wool. Here's were you want to add your vinegar and dye. Now with this yarn I used four colors, but I have done it with just two. When you use two you want to pick two colors that will blend together and make other colors come through, example red and blue will make different shades of the red and blue but also purples. I used for the first half a yellow and the second half a green, put the lighter colors on first. now heat the water to a strong simmer, something you can still put your finger in quickly. Put the yarn in the water, both at the same time, now gently squeeze to get the dye to go up inside the balls. Let this simmer for 30 min. Remove and let cool to the point you can handle them with rubber gloves on, now gently squeeze out the water. Follow the same steps for the second color, I used yellow first then green. 1/8Th tsp should be enough dye.

So here I have the first two steps done. Warning, dispose your water with the dye carefully, do not dye were you have foods, do not use utensils that you cook or eat with. So the next step I came up with by accident. Make sure the balls of yarn are squeezed gently of most the water, we don't need it dripping wet at this point. Now I rewind the balls from the outside on to the ball winder, this distributes the first two colors randomly. Now repeat the process with two more colors, which mine were, blue and red. Again squeeze gently, as much water as you can. Then I wind it up on my Knitty Knotty, tie it up and let it dry.