Dyetastic!

Allrighty then. KnitPicks and Dharma Trading are out to get me. I ordered at lunchtime on December 28th. On December 31st, I had both packages on my doorstep, all snuggled up next to each other begging to be torn into and reveled in. Three days! Total! And I picked the cheap shipping specificially so that I'd have time to finish a couple other things before setting off on my journey into a neat new hobby!

Well, I guess I can't complain. Still. Three days! That's crazy. I have visions of picking the overnight shipping and having it delivered all Wiley E. Coyote style, before I even hit "confirm".



The yarn. It actually looks more like "sunshine" in the picture than it did in real life. I would have named it "sand", but then probably fewer people would buy it. (I did have a color card, and wonder if this was a weird batch or something - it looked yellower on the card, too).



A nice bath. Dunno if it's true or not, but one of the KnitList folks tipped me off to KnitPicks yarn sometimes having wossname oil (spinning stuff) or other random gunk in it, so I washed it first. Probably a good idea in general, even if it's not a specific KnitPicks problem.



I added the dye to the water...



...and stirred it up. The amount of dye I bought is supposed to dye two pounds of fabric, and I had about four ounces of yarn, so it was a total guess as to how much to use. (Well, I could have weighed out 1/16th of an oz., but I don't have a scale that's accurate for that small an amount.) The water turned a pretty orange, anyway.



I put in the yarn. The water was hot at this point, but not simmering yet. When it reached 180, I put in the vinegar. I kept it at about 190 for the rest of the time.



Not the greatest picture, but you can sort of see that the water is clearing at this point. This was after about 20 minutes of simmering.



A bath in Synthropol. I'm kind of scared of this stuff. I don't know that I'll use it again.



Rinsed out the Synthropol. I'm a little worried that the water still isn't running clear, but with every rinse I notice that the cotton ties I used on the skeins are lightening, so I hope that the loose dye is only coming from them. If there really is a problem, I should be able to fix it once it's knitted up. I hope, anyway.

Now I'm waiting for the laundry to finish so I can use the washer to spin out the yarn, and I'll lay it out to dry. If the color looks anything like I expect it to, it'll be perfect! (It was Jacquard Acid Dye "burnt orange". I suspect "pumpkin" might have been even better, but I expected the yellow to have an effect on the final color. Of course, it was so light, it probably didn't - we will see, I suppose.)