With pretty much most of my time dedicated to taking care of my little angel*, it leaves little time for much else.
I might be able to sneak in a few stitches of knitting during naps, but to get the pots and pans out and get in some dyeing? That is a lot more time consuming. And his naps typically aren’t.
Then I came across something called solar dyeing.
Essentially it is identical to normal acid dyeing, except you use the sun’s heat to fix the dye.
Once the yarn has been soaked in water and citric acid (vinegar is good too), it’s just a case of adding your dye and putting it all into a sealed glass container (most people use cleaned food jars) in the glorious sunshine.
Below you can see my attempt at this. I used Dolmio jars but others brands are available.
You can set it up in the morning, and bring it inside in the evening. Only requiring a few minutes to stuff it in the jar at the start of the day, and another few minutes to rinse it at the end.
And here are the results…
Yeah…you noticed that there is no green in that one.
I maybe soaked the yarn again, added a few green sprinkles and nuked it in the microwave.
But it was mostly solar dyed! 😉
*He is currently asleep on me with the cutest little smirk. This doesn’t happen all the time.
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