Redo-dee-doo

One of the most intelligent things I've done so far this year (and yes, I know we're only a few weeks in) was to take an extra day off before going back to work after the holidays. I managed to give myself three whole days to myself. The first day was a laundry day, the second was a house cleaning day, and the third... oh the third...

The third was dye day. I dyed that day... get it? Nyuk yuk... This is the result of an afternoon mucking about in the dye pots at Tara's house:

Clockwise from the top left : BFL (blue faced leicester) in grey and purple, BFL in coppery reds and oranges, merino with sparkles in blue and green, Berroco Ultra Alpaca in lime green, another BFL in coppery reds and oranges (the sister to the first), MCN (merino cashmere nylon) in wine reds and purples, and MCN in blue and grey.

I might have danced around with them a few times since I took that photo. Ahem...

This is the only the second time I've spent time dyeing yarn, and so it's not a quick process by any means. It took me about three hours to get those skeins done, most of the time spent musing about colours. I usually draw a blank when I'm asked to put colours together. All I know is that I like colour, and I like it rich, deep and bright. If I were smart, I would have planned ahead.

But meh, I plan every moment of the rest of my life, so what would have been the fun in that?

I did have one thing I wanted to do: an overdye job. "Overdye" always makes me think of "overdoing it," like "extreme dyeing" or something... dyeing whilst downhill skiing or bungee jumping. And while it would make for an interesting blogpost, that's not what I mean. I mean dyeing yarn or a garment a whole other colour by putting dye over it.

Behold, a shawl I made from a wild colourway of Araucania Atacama, an alpaca yarn. It's been sitting in my yarn basket for a while now, and I've never worn it outside of the house. It needed... something.

And behold, the same shawl overdyed with some blue-green dye. Yes... I think this will work.

After I pulled it out of the water after rinsing it, Tara, dkzack and I stood there and traded observations of it. The pattern is easier to distinguish, now that it's not battling with the colour., and I think it suits my colouring better. I wish I could take credit for choosing the colour, but it was upon the other girls' suggestion that I did it. Pretty good redo, if I do say so myself. Ah, if only life was so easy to redo...

Think of all the knitting time I would have given myself!