When I started dyeing, I was using a salad spinner to spin out the excess water in the yarn before hanging it to dry.
My arm got really really tired and I wasn't able to get very much water out. It took skeins 24-48 hours to dry, and my Avalon base with the silk took even longer. I don't have a lot of space to dry skeins, so I couldn't dye very fast because I didn't have the space to dry the yarn! (I dry yarn in our guest shower.)
I had heard other dyers talk about using a spin dryer (basically a small portable dryer) and thought that I might look into that at some point. Then, someone in my local knitting group had ended up with two spin dryers and mentioned that she was considering selling one. I decided to take the plunge and buy it. And I am so glad that I did! It has made a world of difference in my dyeing, both in the drying time (less than a day now, even for the silk yarn!) as well as for the self-striping yarn.
Once the yarn is dry, I reskein it. Some dyers reskein their yarn and some don't. For me, I think the finished skein looks neater when reskeined, so I choose to take this extra step (although I sometimes wish I didn't because it takes up a lot of time!). Right now, I have a set up for reskeining that I'm not thrilled with. At some point I plan to get an actual reskeiner or an electric skein winder, but for now, I'm using what I have: a horizontal swift and a ball winder. Here's what I do:
I put the yarn on the swift and wind it into a cake. I then take that cake and rewind it into a skein using the swift (the picture below is of winding it into a cake, but the image shows the "handle" that I use as I reskein [top left corner]). It's definitely a workout for my right arm! But I've been listening to and watching a lot of podcasts while I do the reskeining, which makes the time go by much more enjoyably.
Once I have the yarn all reskeined onto the swift, I tied it off using choke ties to keep the yarn from tangling. I've been using cotton yarn for these ties in various colors. Here's a little secret: the color yarn used for the choke ties is actually coded for the yarn base. Although I can tell the bases apart, it's nice to just be able to see at a glance what base the yarn is. (See below for the color code--now whenever you see a picture of my yarn even without a label, you can identify the base yourself!)
After that, I remove the skein from the swift and give it a few twists, fold it in half, slip one side into the other side's loop, and voila! Skein of yarn all prettified and ready for a label.
Color coding for choke ties
Guenevere: light green
Perceval: white
Gawain: brown
Camelot: reinforcement thread in variegated purples/blues/reds
Galahad: tan
Avalon: dark green
Lancelot: orange
King Arthur: salmon
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