You know how it is; searching on pinterest and etsy for gorgeous yarn colors, just for the sake of drooling over them. Most of the time it ends with only looking, mostly because the yarn I like the most, has to come from America. I don’t mind that, but if you want to ship to Holland, you’re likely to pay almost the same amount of money you spend on the yarn on import fees. I don’t like paying that much for yarn, so I decided to take out my yarn dyeing stuff and get going myself!

I wanted to get a semi solid teal color and that is exactly what I got! This exceeded all of my expectations and I truly can say I’m totally in love.

Look at that gorgeous saturated color!

When I dye yarn I always write the exact amounts down, so I can use them later if I want to replicate the result. And a result it is! I’m by no means an expert but I really wanted to share the recipe with you, to share the wealth 🙂

Here’s what I used:

I used 50 grams of phildar Phil folk sock yarn which is 75 % wool and 25 % polyamide

Wilton leaf green icing gel

Wilton royal blue icing gel

Vinegar

Here’s what I did:

I pre soaked the yarn in a bowl with hot tap water and 4 tea spoons of white vinegar. I left it to soak for +/- 3 hours. I don’t think it matters for how long you soak it, as long as the water has gone through and through. This helps absorb the dye evenly, as I understand it.

I set a pan on the stove with a thick bottom to help distribute the heat evenly. I poured in about 5 cups of water without vinegar. Next I put in the yarn which is drained of excess water but still moist. I put on the heat and let it slowly come to a near boil.

When the yarn was heating up I prepared the dye solution. 400 ml hot water -> about 1,5 cup without any vinegar. Then I put a little fork in the jar of wilton royal blue and scooped out quite a big amount, so that the fork is totally covered in gel. I stirred it through the water until it was completely dissolved. Then I scooped out half a fork worth of leaf green, this is enough to make the end color more to the green side than blue. I stirred the green through the dye solution and let it dissolve.

When the water is near boiling I turned down the heat to a low and added 3 table spoons of vinegar to the pot and stirred. I pushed the yarn to the sides and gently poured in the dye solution. Then I turned the heat to a little higher setting and left it to simmer until the water was completely clear.

You can see I poured the dye solution in the middle because that’s where it’s a bit darker.

As a final step I rinsed the yarn gently with dish soap and water until there was no dye coming out the skein. I hung it to dry over night and when it was dry made beautiful pictures of the yarn and did little dances ^^

It’s only a 50 gram skein with 210 meters on it, so I don’t know what to do with it yet, but I’m sure I will come up with something 😉 I really like how it works with gold, so maybe a little shawl with a gold shawl pin? What do you think I should make?