Berry Punch Yarn

About 10 years ago I did my first yarn dyeing! And probably because of beginner's luck, but it was one of my most successful dye jobs. The yarn was pure merino, I used three saches of instant drinks (a local analogue of Cool Aid) and I knitted a pair of fingerless gloves with it, which are still very much in use and still my most favourite late autumn - early spring gloves.

Husband and I were talking about these gloves on our hike on Vitosha recently and it occurred to me that I had never tried to recreate that dye job. I had some white Yarnart Superwash sock yarn at hand and I thought a pair of socks, matching the gloves was actually a very good idea.

I found my blog posting, read the instructions and went out in search for STEP instant drinks. As we never buy such products, I hadn't followed the market. Unfortunately (for me), it turned out that in the 10 year interval the Red Grapes variety had been discontinued. However, I found another drink by the same manufacturer, which contained two of the three E artificial colours of Red grape - the red and the blue, but it lacked the chocolate brown.

I prepared the yarn and the drinks according to my own instructions and dyed the yarn. Then washed it and let it dry. The resulting skein (shown on the last picture) was a bit redder and paler than the mitts, so I made a light solution of bordeaux and brown acid dyes and dipped the whole skein in it. I am much happier with the overdyed skein (shown on the first picture), but I'll wait until tomorrow and natural light to decide if I want to leave it as it is or deepen further the brown and bordeau shades.