I made purple yarn!

Apparently dyeing yarn is like eating chips - it's so hard to stop after the first time.

Dyeing yarn has gotten under my skin and I just can't stop! I LOVE IT! And a couple weeks ago I got the perfect excuse to dye again...

My good friend Melissa is getting married... She needs to cover her shoulders in the church she says. That's when a little thought bubble popped out of my head. A shawl!!!!! I have been itching to knit a shawl for a while and this would be the perfect excuse! I have seen her dress and it's gorgeous! It's also an absolutely gorgeous shade of purple... and she wants the shawl to match only to be a lighter shade. "I can do this" I tell her! Getting excited and plotting how much fun this would be.

I start scouting patterns for shawls. I narrow it down to the Flower Basket or the Swallow Tail. I studied them both and showed them both to my friend. Fortunately yet unfortunately she loved them both and was more worried about the color... I got the color covered I assured her.

I finally did and eeney-meeney-miney-moe and chose the Swallow Tail.

I picked two skeins of naked Malabriio Lace for the shawl because I saw the same yarn used on some other people's projects and it looked fabulously soft while still showing stitch definition


and then I picked some naked KnitPicks fingering weight (merino wool, silk) just because I wanted to make the dyeing worth it!


Then I got to dyeing!!!

I picked a beautiful purple dye by Dylon that I knew would match her dress perfectly. Look at the beautiful purple water...


Here's how the Malabrigo came out. I wanted it to be all purple but I also wanted it variated so I stuck two ends of each skein in the dye for about 10 minutes. Then I stuck the entire skeins into the water for another 10 minutes so that it would come out with darker and lighter spots


And the KnitPicks Bare. For this I just stuck the entire skein in the water because I would like to try to add a different color to this at a later date and see what happens.


Aren't they fabulous!!!

Then I got started knitting the shawl with my new Zephyr needles from KnitPicks I might add.


I'll keep you posted on my progress