First attempt at dyeing yarn/string for a crochet item.

I first was tempted to try this by Deborah Atkinson on her blog, Snowcatcher.  And I still have a lot to learn.  I am not a patient person so I just take an idea and go with it without usually reading all the instructions, failures, successes, etc.

I seem to learn more from my mistakes than I do reading of others' successes   And of course my first mistake was not taking pictures of the flowers when I first picked them, what they looked like with the water and vinegar added and then warmed up in the microwave.

But this first pic is after I threw away the dye that I had soaked them in over night.  This is how I suspended the Aunt Lydia's Crochet Thread Classic10 which is 100% mercerized cotton.  I was going for a variegated look and I did succeed in doing that.

I used purple morning glories and just a very few pink rose petals.  And next time I will either use more flowers or less water to hopefully get a more intense color.  I was happy with this but would like a darker color too.

I didn't measure how much I cut from the spool.  I'm not even going to hazard a guess.  Not enough for what I wanted to do tho.  I wanted to do the entire skirt for the angel pictured below.  But I like the looks of the last few rows done in white so not too disappointed but will dye more than I think I need next time..

I need to keep experimenting with colors, hues, brightness, etc. Here is a sample of the flowers I used. There was combo of the morning glories just bloomed, some that had been on the vine for a bit too long and just a few of the pink rose petals. If I can collect enough of the bright purple morning glories this year I will try a small amount again this fall and wait for next summer's crop of flowers for a larger and more intense batch of dye.

After a night of soaking  partially submerged in the bowl of dye I took it out and was going to leave it to dry but....

 thought it would take too long to dry so...

decided to use the blow dryer on it.  I thought the heat would help set the colors also.  I did not check to see if it would be colorfast because I don't plan on ever washing or wearing
the finished item.

And of course I thought if I loosened up the loops of thread it would dry even quicker but...

It took a little longer to get it rolled into this ball because the string got tangled up.  And this picture is closer to the true color of the string than any of the others.  I need a better camera or maybe just a new photographer.  But I let the ball set for most of the day and started crocheting this angel.  By the time I was ready for my small ball of thread it had changed to a light golden color with a slight cast of light purple.  I liked the variegated look of the thread.

And I am so in love with this angel just like I was with the first angel from this pattern. You can find the first angel I made from this pattern here.

I purchased the pattern on Listia but it can be found on BJ's Country Cottage's blog and can be ordered here.