Welcome to official blog for The Hand Dyed Yarn Swap. This is a fun swap where we hand dye yarn for our swap partner. Sign-ups for Round 4 are now open. We also have links for buying undyed yarn and supplies as well as tutorials for dyeing yarn.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Yay!

My yarn arrived yesterday. Many thanks to Ursa!

Swap yarn

Such beautiful colours. I can't wait to knit it up.

6 comments:

Celena said...

That's great yarn! :)

JanKnit said...

Beautiful! What was the picture that inspired it?

cseneque said...

I didn't get a picture with it, but the yarn is gorgeous and I'm looking forward to taking my own pictures of some finished socks!

Ursa said...

yes, i purposely didn't include the picture because it's not a postcard. it's a photo of a beach that i took myself. i wanted to print it for Christabel, but the printer wasn't cooperating. i'll post it shortly.

cheers
Ursa

shelly said...

i just died one color for a swap partner, orange, my first koolaid dye. how in the world do you get colors like this? i can only begin to imagine the thrill is dying this so nicely.

Ursa said...

hi Shelley,

i use acid dyes (Jaquard and Louet's Gaywool dyes), and i use either "dip-dyeing" method or kettle-dyeing (sometimes i'll do immersion to get one solid colour then dip some sections into other colours, like a light blue overall and dip into darker blues, purples, greens, etc.). with kettle-dyeing it's placing your yarn in a pot, or roasting/baking pan all laid out in a somewhat single layer, then pouring the different dye solutions in different areas and letting them soak in/steam over heat. the higher the heat, the faster they absorb and you'll often get lighter colours and some undyed areas (which can be the result you are going for), or lower, slower heat to absorb slower for darker, more thorough saturation. also, adding a bit of water onto the yarn before adding the dye solutions will dilute the solutions some to give a lighter dye job.

that's what's worked for me so far. just playing around and most of the time it works.

cheers
Ursa