Easter Crafting Fun

I've been away for a while, but it's a new year, I have a new job and this means more time for myself, my crafting, and (hopefully) my blog!

I'm starting off with an easy, but fun one.  This is what I did last year for Easter.  I planned to post it later, but there was some interest out there on more in-depth process info, so it's going up early.

Since I feel I've pretty well mastered crochet, and I'm learning how to knit, I decided the next thing to take on is dyeing yarn.  I've tried a few things but before I'm ready to move on to Big Girl Dyes (acid dyes), I wanted to try one more fun, food safe thing - Easter Egg Dyes!

Somewhere along the line, I decided I wanted to compare how the dyes work on wool as opposed to eggs.

So, I started the process by hard boiling some eggs, buying some dyes, and winding my wool into 9 sections (one for each color of dye) of about 25 grams each:

Mason jars in the front row, plastic party cups in the back

After prepping the wool by soaking it in water for an hour, I prepared the dyes according to the package directions.  I used mason jars and double dye (2 tablets, twice the vinegar, and twice the water) for the wool and clear plastic party cups for the eggs.

I dropped the eggs in the cups and put the mason jars into a glass jelly roll pan for ease of transport.

Eggs in the dye

The yarn went in the mason jars then into the oven at 200*

Yarn in mason jars pre-baking

After baking, and exhausting dyes

I left the eggs in the cups and yarn in the oven until the yarn had completely exhausted the dyes (i.e. the liquid left in the jars is clear), which took a lot longer than I anticipated - about 2 hours.


When I took the yarn out of the oven to cool, I took the eggs out of the cups to dry.

After the yarn was completely cool, I rinsed until the water ran clear (almost immediately), and hung it to dry.  The only color that didn't really turn out, was the purple, which is, apparently, notorious for breaking.

Here are the finished products:

Some day, in the not too distant future, there'll be a progress update with the projects I'm made (there are some ideas in the works).