Rainbow Yarn - an Adventure in dyeing with Food Colouring

Have you seen the yarn from YarnInk.  She's a Canadian hand dyer.  I follow her on Instagram and everyday she puts up yarn that I have to resist buying.  I really hope that I'm getting some sock and shawl yarn from her this Christmas.  I gave my husband my list  . . . and he's pretty good at getting me stuff I like!

I keep looking at the Rainbow yarns she does.  My daughter would love a rainbow sweater, but at $27 a skein for DK weight yarn . . . .that's not happening.  So I decided to dye some myself.

I have 7 balls of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes that I had bought to make myself a white sweater.  After making another sweater for myself in Knit Picks Swish Worsted I decided I wanted to save up for a better quality yarn for something for myself.  For kids knits Knit Picks is great.

I wound 5 of the balls into skeins and followed the directions in this Knitty tutorial for how to dye using food colouring.

I got all my supplies organized before my son's nap and I had it ready to go in the oven just as he woke up.

 I left it in the oven until it reached 82 degrees Celsius.  The water looked all clear. 

I let it cool and rinsed it.  Hardly any colour came out.

Rainbow yarn skein yumminess!!  I'm so thrilled with how they turned out.  If I was to do this again I would use a bit less yellow dye . .  . to make it a bit mellower.  For the purple I used Kool aid, which I've done before but I would like to try purple food colouring and see if I get get a bit more variation in the purple.

For a sweater for a 3 1/2 year old girl!!  Perfect.

And I've already cast on  for her.  A pre-school size Baby Sunnyside Sweater. (It's the same pattern as I knit my last sweater, the Lady Sunnyside)  .  I'll have to call them Thunder and Rainbow sweaters since mine is grey.

The pattern calls for fingering weight yarn so I'm knitting the 3-6 month size using worsted weight yarn and 4.5 mm needles.  So far it looks to be the perfect size.  Happy Knitting.

2 Week Sweater . . . almost

It's done!!!  I'm so happy with the way it turned out!

Pattern: Iced Cardigan by Carol Feller

Yarn: Bare Swish Bulky Yarn
Yarn dyed using kool-aid.

Pattern modifications:  Extended the sleeves to measure 19" and the body to measure 15"

Took me a little bit longer to knit .. . . 15 days instead of 14 but I'm still excited to have it finished to wear on these cold winter days.

Updated Photos:

Next Project:  Spoked Cardigan: from Interweave knits

Yarn:  Amazing by Lion Brand

My husband gave me 4 balls of this yarn for Christmas several years ago and I have been struggling to figure out what to do with it.  I was checking out the project pages on Ravelry and saw someone else had used this yarn to make the Spoked Cardigan.  Perfect.

Two Week Sweater

It is cold.  Minus -18 C cold . .  with a windchill. Normally this would not phase me but with 2 small children (one only 5 months old)  I don't really want to take them outside very long. . . . and when I'm inside I am craving cozy warm sweaters!  I'm trying to make myself a new, chunky knit sweater in less than 2 weeks!  Can I do it?  Let's see.

Here is the yarn: Swish Bare Bulky from Knit Picks.  I dyed it using Kool -Aid - Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade

Here is what it looks like after I dyed it!  I was going for a kettle dyed look! I love the colour.

Here is my progress after 7 days. Yoke finished, armholes on waste yarn and ready to start the waist shaping.  7 more days to finish the body and knit 2 arms. 

What's the shortest amount of time you have ever knit a sweater in?