Variegated yarn knits up beautifully. So, be brave and make your own. You don't really need any fancy equipment or dyes and it's not as difficult as you might think.
What You Need.
Cushings dye
white vinegar
glass or other nonreactive casserole dish
plastic cups
apron
wet sponge for cleaning up spills
rubber gloves
dust mask
pH strips
optional: water softener
Making Variegated Yarn
Rainbow-dyeing, sprinkle-dyeing, tie-dyeing, and casserole-dyeing are all names for the same process of creating yarn that has many different colors. Cushing dyes is used in the recipe below and will work on un-spun fiber, yarn or cloth. What matters is that the fiber content be animal-based: silk, wool, alpaca, camel or angora.
Soaking In Vinegar
You first need to soak the fiber to be dyed in a vinegar water bath with a pH of 4.5 to 5.0. You need about a tablespoon of vinegar for every quart of water. Note: the acidity of water varies so check with pH paper and adjust if necessary. Strips to measure pH are readily available at many drugstores and retail outlets.
Dye Liquor
For a medium shade, mix 1/4 teaspoon dye in 1/2 cup water. Use more dye for darker shades, less for lighter. Mix as many colors as you want.
Dyeing
Remove the yarn from the vinegar soak and gently squeeze out excess water. Lay it in a nonreactive baking pan - do not use anything with a non-stick coating. You can use enamelware, glass and stainless steel but do not use aluminum, copper or steel. Arrange the yarn anyway you like: fold, tie, twist, spiral and/or zigzag. You can apply the dye in various ways; a squeeze bottle, a syringe or a sponge paintbrush. You can just simply pour it on the area you choose if you like. Remove any excess from the pan with a syringe.
Heating
Rinse out excess dye from the yarn - the water should run clear - and wash with a mild soap. It's important to use soap as it's best to find out if the garment is non-fast now rather than later after you've made it into something. Rinse again well and hang to dry. You are ready to knit with your own hand-dyed yarn.
Hand Dyed Wool Yarn
Twisted Sisters Yarn was founded by Lynne Vogel and friends over ten years ago. They are a group of innovative hand dyers and designers who have helped to bring modern designs as well as a sense of fun to the world of hand dyed yarn. Not only does Twisted Sisters Yarn mix together breathtaking colors to produce unique colorways, it also uses only the best fibers available.
Twisted Sisters Yarn has become internationally known. This isn't down to slick marketing either; you can't pull the wool over the eyes of knitters - pun intended. The reputation of this company is founded on their expert knowledge. Twisted Sisters Yarn isn't just trying to sell their own collection of hand dyed and painted fibers either; they want to spread the word and show others that hand dyeing yarn can be something we can all do. Their book 'The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook' by Anne Vogel should be in everyone's collection that's seriously interested in hand dying fiber.
The sock workbook goes into great detail. It shows you that dip-dyeing, pour-dyeing, and hand-painting yarns or wool rovings is as easy as making homemade soup. Vogel even includes a nod to the ever-popular use of Kool-Aid as a dye. What is also great about this book is that is also shows you various spinning techniques and how they affect the look and feel of the finished fiber.
But if you don't want to hand dye and spin your own yarn you can always buy it from Twisted Sisters Yarn. Their yarns come with exciting names like 'Voodoo', 'Avarice', 'Elektra' and 'Boudicca' and the colorways live up to these names. The fiber comes in alpaca, merino, silk/merino mixes, rayon/cotton mixes and much more. They also give advice on what needles you should use for each fiber.
What I really appreciate about Twisted Sister Yarn is that, not only do you get exciting fibers in beautiful colors, but they also provide you with many knitting patterns that will show off these fibers at their best.
Twisted Sisters yarn is both for the discerning fiber artist and novice alike. Using hand dyed yarn isn't for knitting gurus or traditionalists; it's about using beautiful fiber to produce wearable artwork - something we can all do.
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