Dyeing lace weight

Last week I bought my last yarn for a little while (must....reduce...stash...). Actually I can totally justify this one as I signed up to do a test knit for a Ravelry pattern, thinking I could use some leftover lace yarn from the stash, only to find out it was too fine. I had not realised that there was more than one type of lace weight (lace is lace right?) but it seems there is. What I had was too fine on its own and not enough to use doubled up- to the shops!

Finding a yarn with 700-800m in a 100g skein was tricky, fortunately Babylonglegs pointed me in the direction of some undyed with the right weight.


In its undyed state it looked like this:

I was pretty nervous about dying this one, it is 80% superfine merino and 20% silk. I had never tried anything that wasn't superwash and certainly no silk. In the interests of avoiding a horrible felted mess I opted for handpainting and steaming with a blue colour scheme.

After dyeing it looked like this:

A nice artistic outdoors shot there (why yes, I do need to cut the grass).

I had been hoping for much darker blues, navy type colours. I think this may have had something to do with the silk as the 100% merino yarn I used to tie the skein came out closer to what I was aiming for. Fortunately it is a colour I am happy with, if not what I was aiming for so I am fairly pleased, and no felting what so ever, wooohoooo!