When we stumbled upon the DIY Ombre Dyed Yarn tutorial by Xandy Peters we were inspired! That weekend we went to our local craft store for yarn and grocery store for Kool-Aid to have a little dyeing party. We also experimented with yarns we had around that we knew were wool, the results were amazing. Not only was this project super easy, the combinations are endless!
We used black cherry, watermelon-cherry, pink lemon-aid, lemon-lime and ice blue punch to come up deep reds, corals, bright blues and minty greens. The first task was to wind the balls of yarn which was the most time consuming task. The yarns we ended up dying were 100% Fisherman’s Wool in Natural, Stitch Nation ‘Full O Sheep’ in Honeycomb and some other hand-me-down wool yarns.
We took Xandy’s tip and used spoons and tongs to maneuver the yarn balls in the dye bath. Once they had boiled the two rounds in their dye baths, the tongs were lifesavers as we rinsed the yarn balls in the cold water. These suckers get super hot!! Half way through dyeing the yarn we came up with the idea of creating a 2-tone ombre by dyeing the yarn – rinsing it / letting it cool, unwinding, rewinding with the new color in the center and re-dying. What we created was a Christmas-Italian-Watermelon inspired colored yarn. I can’t wait to see how this knits up. Each one took the dye in a unique way, the most interesting was Stitch Nation yarn. Since it was already Honeycomb we weren’t sure if it would take color but it took the Black Cherry Kool-Aid wonderfully, creating a fiery color combo.
Mary and I highly recommend trying this out. As they say “if we can do it, so can you!” It was a lot of fun and we plan on sharing some finished projects soon!
We loved everything about this book. The humor, retro photo styling, the crafts… it’s just awesomeness cover to cover.
Rewind Knits and Crochet 