Sunday, March 14, 2010

Yarn Makeover

Awhile back I bought some Plymouth Outback Wool on sale online. It was brightly colored and I figured it would be good for my charity knitting for kids.

Well, I was wrong.

The yarn was just vile! The colors pooled horribly no matter what I tried to knit. It sat in my stash for quite some time and then.... Duh! It occurred to me that I should overdye the yarn!

Below is a sample of the yarn before dyeing. Although bright, it looks innocent enough until it's knit.


I dyed it using blue food color but it wasn't quite dark enough and I ran out of blue food color, so I dyed it again, using blue and purple kool-aid. (I hope the grape kool-aid smell will leave my house soon!)

The next photo shows a swatch that is knit with the original yarn in the top half and the dyed yarn in the bottom half. You have to agree that the dye job is a big improvement. The original yarn was unusable due to weird stripes of ugliness.



And finally, here is a hank of the dyed yarn. I plan to use it to make socks for Mittens for Akkol.