Here is the romney yarn that I spun up and dyed for my SIL… it’s about 118 yds of fingering weight. For the dyeing, I decided to just have fun with the food coloring and pick two colors I thought would look good together; I thought turquoise and purple would compliment each other nicely. I mixed 2 oz of vinegar and 6 oz of water with the food coloring drops according to the box. After making sure the colors were well mixed, I tested them on a paper towel. The turquoise looked great… the purple… well, the purple was completely washed out. I had used just the regular food dyes… 6 drops of red, 5 drops of blue… it looked purple in the squeeze bottle, but nothing much showed up on the paper towel. In a fit of panic I pulled out the neon food coloring and decided to go for deep purple, as the box called it. I just added the drops to the squeeze bottle filled with the lame regular purple, shook it up, and paused when I realized that the liquid now looked black… tested it… yup, black. I thought, “What the hell,” and went with it… black and turquoise go together, too. The thoroughly soaked skein was placed on my purple plastic wrap*, and I proceeded to randomly squeeze the dye liquids all over it, patting it to make sure it went all the way through. I went heavy on the turquoise and used the black for accent. Actually, I was perhaps a bit over zealous with the turquoise… okay, I used all 8 oz… I thought it was all getting soaked into the yarn… no, it was forming a puddle under it… lurking… waiting for me to try to pick up my yarn package. The wrapped, sopping yarn went into the microwave. Five minutes was all it took to get the liquid clear. I think it’s lots of fun to watch the package blow up with hot air only to vacuum seal when the microwave stops… so cool! *grin* I rinsed the yarn with hot water, then slightly less hot water, slowly bringing it down to a more manageable temp. Then, I washed it in a citrus shampoo and conditioner to do away with the vinegar smell.

And here is the result of my dyeing adventure…

I’m not sure if I should name it or something… I have no idea what I would name it. I have a tendency to be very descriptive in my naming, which would cause this to end up something like Monterey Bay Lightning Storm.

I stopped by my LYS on Saturday and picked out both a matching and contrasting yarn to up the yardage. I went with a cotton viscose blend that’s really shiny**. One is a blue, which looks really nice, and the other is a peacock blueish green. I think they are numbers 12 and 16 here.

I hope my SIL likes it… I have no idea what she might be able to knit up with this selection…