The first try was just to get a feel for the process.  We kettle-dyed a skein of 75/25 sock wool in purple Jaquard dye.  It’s a little muted, but it should make a nice pair of socks.

Hand-painted Koolaid all-wool sock yarns from KnitPicks.  The first one is striped in yellow, orange, and 3 colours of red – you can just barely see the darker colours peeking around the back and bottom.  The second randomly was coloured with yellow, orange, and strawberry.

Next came a more complicated acid dye combination.  We had four skeins of Peruvian fingering weight wool and decided they’d look nice as shawls.  That meant pairing them so we would have around 880yds per shawl.  The first two we wanted to try as a combination of blue and teal.  Dye the blue half, simmer some more water, flip the skein, and dye the remainder teal.  We overlooked physics in the first step however, and quickly noticed that the blue dye was siphoning up the skein into the white part!  That’s what happens when you wet the entire skein and then put the remaining end below the water level in the kettle.  We fixed the height issue and carried on.

<<Unfortunately I can’t get a picture of this to upload at the moment, the warning says the max file size is 2M, but iPhoto says the file is 1.4M.  I’ll try again later.>>

There are plans to dye the second set in the same manner, but with vermillion and purple.

Finally, we decided to use what we had learned about uneven heights and dyeing portions of the yarn to create a self-striping sock yarn that changes from dark teal to light across the skein.  We wet the entire skein of a 75/25 sock blend, put half the yarn (the dark end) in the kettle, and left the other end sitting in a ziplock container below the water level in the pot.  The dye gradually siphoned up the skein to pool in the second container and dyed the yarn it held.

I’m really a fan of the patterns in it:

I’m very pleased with the yarn I used – Ceallach Dye’s Summer Silk.  It’s somewhere between Fingering and DK, and varigated (which is always contradindicated for a lace pattern).  The varigations make the entire fabric absolutely beautiful, and the heavier weight means that the pattern is even more visible than it would be in a single-colour lace weight yarn.  It drapes comfortably, and is just warm enough to stave off air conditioning or a breeze.

Finally, I simply love this picture (the stole turned out much longer than I had expected – a result of using a heavier yarn and not removing a repeat).