It had been earmarked for dyeing anyway, this just hastened the trip. I was after two colours of red to make a cardigan for my niece and decided to have a go at immersion dyeing.
First up was bright red, aiming for the colour on the dyepot at full strength, unfortunately it didn't occur to me to actually work out how much powder I needed for the weight of wool, I just put some in and ended up with a pinkish yarn. A second run through and it come out a much better colour.
For the dark red I added a good amount of black. Had a bit of a panic as the white yarn went in as it looked very burgundy. Too late to do anything about it then so I carried on and it came out the colour I was after in the end (some kind of dye pot magic I can only assume).
On the second run I had learnt my lesson and actually weighed the dry yarn and calculated how much powder I needed.
I would also like to put in a bit of a yippee for the magic of superwash here. I have an electric hob which is notoriously difficult to control on the temperature front. I knew this, but decided to give it a go anyway and ended up accidently boiling the pot at least once on each dye run. Fortunately there was no felting and the yarn has come out a lovely even colour so I will probably repeat the experiment but not with anything that is overly fragile.
The scraps of yarn that were too small to use in the main project were handpainted with some dyestock I had mixed up and steamed, they will go to make play food and other toys as each ball is less than 10g.
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