A different dyeing technique

I have discovered a new and, in my opinion, very unique yarn dyeing technique. Remember, I work with thrifted sweaters, unravel them to reveal their wonderful naked yarn, then dye them up.

Normally I dye my yarn after I have put it into skeins using my $1.95 niddy noddy.

I skein it:


Then dye it:


Then rinse, wash, rinse and hang to dry:


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The last dye batch I did I made way too much dye, I mean like gallons of dye just for those piddly five little skeins shown above. Don't ask me what I was thinking. Anyway, I couldn't bear to waste all that dye. So on a whim, I went upstairs to my old sweater stash (which I stocked before I remembered that I love to dye, I was planning on donating these back) and grabbed anything that I thought had any chance of looking cool after splashing a bit of color on it and unraveling it.

I'll show you a couple process pics:

A YELLOW sweater




Gets saturated with fiber reactive dye:




Gets washed and dried in the machine (which means no waiting days for my skein to dry thankyouverymuch)



Gets unraveled, AND, to my utter amazement, it turned out SPECTACULAR!







I got three beautiful skeins of Aran weight yarn after tripling the sweater's original gauge.


I think it's my best dye batch ever and will add this dyeing technique to my bag of tricks.

Here's some more pic for giggles:










And my new avater: