Acid dying. How I did it.

It is time to tell how I dyed my yarn. I used omega dyes which is an all in one dye meaning you don't have to add vinegar or something like that. I made a portion of each colour in a plastic container. 1 tsp + 100 ml water. The day after I added 1/4 tsp as I wanted the colours to be darker.

I started out with testing the different colours as well as various mixtures. This is my set up :-)

And these are the results. They wern't as dark as on this picture.

I winded 85 g (300m/100g) of 100% wool onto the mega hank board. There is almost 50 cm between the nails and this gave me a 30 m hank, but with the 2 halfs together. The wool soaked for app 10 hours in lukewarm water with washing up liquid.I then sat down and decided the lenght and colour of each sequences. Each sequence was 1,5 to 3 m in length. The colours I used were: marine blue( i think, they have send me something wrong), moss, malachite and mahogny.
The set up for dyeing.

My Secret pal 10 has told me how she does and I copied her way. I kept the mega hank in a plastic bag and pulled out app 1½ m, placed it on cling film (normal one, not the one for microwaves) and painted as previously decided. I mixed the colours as I moved on using plastic cups and syringes. When a sequences was painted I wrapped the clingfilm around it and rolled it into a "snail". I used plenty (too much) of dye!

I then put the snail in a microwave steamer and put it the microwave for a total of eitght minutes. And got a shock when the whole thing more or less exploded. In the future I'll use less liquid, lower effect and maybe make holes in the cling film to let the steam out! Now it made it's own holes which caused some of the liquid+dye to escape from the snail and collect in the bottom of the steamer (use steamer!)

When the wool had colled down I cut it/pulled it out of the snail (the cling film goes hard, I wonder if it would be better to use microwave film). I rinsed it -a lot. There was quite a lot of left over dye. (use less next time)

I let the wool dry overnight.

And rewinded it onto the mega hank board. It seemed like the best way to avoid it to tangle. From the board I winded it into a skein (by hand) and then into a normal size hank using my winder.
And this is how it looks when knitted up (my first sock ever). In real the colours look more even.