Behind the Scenes: Self-striping sock yarn Dyeing Process

The dyeing itself can be done in a few ways. I've seen people using mason jars within a water bath (either crock pot or pot on the stove), but my current setup isn't big enough to hold multiple mason jars, so I'm using a different method. I dye one color (sometimes two) at a time.

I find the colored ties and choose one section, placing it in the dye pot. I use the crock pot lid to hold the yarn in place. I let that color set and then move onto the next section and dye it. I continue like that until I've dyed all of the colors. If I am doing four colors, I will sometimes dye the sections opposite one another at the same time, using two crock pots. But this means that I'm technically going through the dye process 2-4+ times for each colorway, which can take up almost an entire day's worth of dyeing time!

Problem!

I was moving right along with my self-striping dyeing and then I hit a huge problem. Color creep. This pink/green colorway pictured below (Erec and Enide Variant) is a good example of that. I dyed the pink first and then when I dyed the green, the dye just moved right on past that crock pot lid and into the pink, creating a 2-4 inch section of a dark color. No! I really wanted much cleaner transitions between colors.

I tried multiple fixes, including using clips or super tight choke ties at the color changes, but that still didn't work well.

Then I got that spin dryer I mentioned in the last newsletter. So I soaked the yarn like usual but then put it through the spin dryer before putting it into the dye pot, thinking that if the yarn was less wet, the color might not wick too far into the other section. I then put the yarn through the spin dryer in between each section of dyeing.

I also added gravity to the mix. Before, I had a shallow bowl that I placed beside the crock pot to hold the sections of yarn that were not being dyed. Now I use a tall bucket so the yarn is coming down into the crock pot (which is what is shown in the above picture).

These two factors (dryer yarn and gravity) seem to have done the trick and I'm getting much cleaner transitions between colors now. Whew!

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