A post mainly for the yarn nerds. My Kool-aid yarn dying experience was appealing enough that I decided to take it up a notch. I ordered a few acid dyes suitable for wool/protein fibers and a few skeins of bare yarn, and I watched a few YouTube videos and checked out a few library books: a recipe for success.

If you grew up in the 70s, you may have watched a lot of reruns on UHF channels. In Atlanta, that would have been on local independent station WTCG channel 17, owned by Ted Turner and called TBS, retransmitted nationally over cable in the mid 70s to become a “superstation” and we all know how that turned out. The Munsters was one of these reruns and Grandpa Munster knew how to play: smoke, trapdoor, potions. He was a great alternative to the Petticoat Junction daughters that came on next.

My sister and I would imitate him in our basement, filling glass canning jars with water and food coloring–really annoyed at the leak capacity for canning jar lids and not understanding why they were made that way–and set about creating potions. I found it impossible to stop mixing and adding colors to each other; brown liquid was often the outcome.

I have a distinct memory of staring at a jar of muddied liquid, ply board table under it, dryer in front of that, washer to my right, shelves of jars of rusty nails, turpentine, and rusty objects somewhere behind me, granddaddy long leg eggs in all the corners, and the smell of the crawlspace dirt, spray starch, kitty litter of the 70s, and Sears laundry detergent (potion ingredient) keeping me grounded, thinking to myself, come on Royalty, get it together. Maybe you don’t have what it takes.

And it occurred to me as I descended to our basement last weekend, imaging a trap door and puff of smoke as I went down, that I was playing at Grandpa Munster again. But this was serious business. I needed a specific complimentary color for a Christmas present I’m knitting, a deep, rich green. So I set up shop in my basement and made my first effort. It was a simple process, one color, what could go wrong?

After a bit of overthinking and obsession, I decided I wanted to alter the basic green the dye company offered and go for what they called a jewel tone green in their suggested color mixing doc, more of an emerald. It takes acid and heat to get the wool to take the dye, so I washed and soaked a skein of superwash bulky wool (for my rainbow blanket–need a green) and a skein of 70% non superwash merino and 30% silk for the Christmas present and brought it up to the stove.

I mixed the stock solution in our basement, following directions for jewel green by mixing 75% green with 25% blue powder (while wearing a mask), then back upstairs to stove, added dye, brought temp up, and had this:

Gentle reader, imagine the smell of wet wool and fatal flaws. For I then thought a little too long and a little too hard and decided it was too close to teal than emerald. No problem: I could wash it and let it dry, do some research, maybe overdye it later, I thought. And then the gods of the dye bath and immediate gratification grabbed me by the shoulders and whispered in my ear. Why not now? I could do it now! Whispers are rarely nice, as I learned in elementary school.

But I’d forgotten all I’d learned in life in chasing the emerald ideal. So I looked up forest green formulas with the thought I’d balance out the tealness, subtracted green from the mix since I already had that, and did a 50% of 5% +25% +30% of purple, yellow, and red powder (in ounces then translated to grams) calculated for 200 grams of fiber, all in my head while in a hurry, because as an English major, I had that ability.

At about this point I was sweating and swearing a lot and a little overexcited and was wondering what was stuck to my shoe in our basement as I calculated and mixed. Upon inspection, I noticed the little presents our larger dog had left on our laundry room floor. (Dog accidents are a rare occurrence for him. Note: maybe stop feeding him so much lettuce. File next to: don’t take four year old blueberry picking the day before trip to the pool.)

We can all see now that fate was shouting in my ear and I would not listen. Lots of swearing while still calculating, and maybe even slight euphoria about the dye process coursing through me too despite the dog business. Rage and joy are dangerous drugs. I took the necessary pause from the time sensitive dye experiment to clean this up and clean shoes and get new shoes. Done. Nothing would keep me from my green, my precious. Finally, I bounded up stairs with my magic formula to balance out the teal to emerald by adding forest (!??!!) and without thinking (did I need to even say that?) poured that dye right on the hot wool. Love me unconditionally, please, because I then had this:

Introducing the Nazgul of yarn, neither dead or alive, neither green nor brown.

After a few days and drying and rolling up into a ball, it actually looks a little better than the above, sort of like kindness. Brian even said good things about the bulky version (superwash takes on deeper hues more easily), that is has the look a forest because of all the different greens and browns, but when I asked if he wanted a scarf from it, he panicked and said, didn’t I already have plans for it? Hadn’t I said that? No Samwise Gamgee is Brian.

But, I think it will work with my rainbow blanket after all, and I’ve grown to really like it. Maybe the silk/merino blend could make something cool. Anybody want the silk blend, let me know: it’s yours. It doesn’t match what I needed for the Christmas present and I’ve got enough projects on my list.

Instead, I went with a safe choice, not able to face the green again for a while. Luckily the dye company’s purple is a perfect match for one of the colors in the Christmas present yarn, so I went the safe route. I will say that dyeing yarn is clearly addictive. I can’t wait to do it again and mix colors intentionally, without dog pooh on my shoe. Long live magic potions and mad scientists.