An experience to dye for

A couple of weeks ago, Kim and I got together to try a little dyeing. I hadn't dyed anything before, but I have all this wool sitting here just asking for a little color. Kim had done some dyeing before, and I felt like I needed a little hand holding. So off we went. I had visions in my head of hand painted yarn that was dyed in clumps of color, sort of like Socks That Rock is. You know...an distinct area of blue, another of green, etc? Well, here was our first try at that...I think a little Gaywool blue and Raspberry.

Not so much distinct blocks, but not bad. My next attempt at multicolored yarn produced a uniform shade of brick red. Very pretty, but again, just not what I was expecting.

We finally figured out that dark colors were pretty overpowering. Amazing how quickly we figured that out, eh? So I thought I'd try some lighter colors. This last batch is some yellow, green and blue dye. I tried the hot-pour method. Or at least our version of it. Here's the wool sitting in the dye

and now spun up.

I surprised myself with this one. I don't usually like green, especially something of this shade, but the more I look at it the more it's growing on me. I had been calling it "Split Pea", but I'm not a big fan of split pea soup, so the name has quite the negative connotation, at least for me. Maybe "Shrek" is a better name?