Note: apparently Fiber Friday is not limited to spinning, since today's post is about dyeing. Consider yourselves warned.

Last weekend we had a lovely visit from the siblings-in-law* who came down to make off with some of our baby stuff in anticipation of their firstborn's arrival in July. And while Mom-to-be is a knitter, she hasn't been feeling the motivation to do much baby knitting these days. So I, as Auntie-to-be, have taken up the gauntlet. I had some undyed Swish superwash leftover from my Fabulous Intarsia Experiment, so I handed SIL my Acid Dye Quick Reference and told her to pick some colors.

This is an example of how it's a good idea to get input from the intended recipients of a knitted item, because I would never have put these colors together.

The yarn soaked overnight, and I squeezed it out and laid it on some plastic wrap while I go the dyes ready. It was a bit windy, so quite a bit of VM ended up in the dye package, but it did no harm to the yarn, so far as I can tell. I used highly technological means to apply the dye (plastic water bottles with holes punched in the lids so I could squeeze the dye out). The parents picked Sun Yellow, Golden Yellow and Emerald, but I used artistic license to add just a squirt of Fuschia to the mix.

I wrapped up the yarn, put it in the roaster, and then took it back out again to spray it with citric acid (oops!). Then back in the roaster on a rack above about 1.5 inches of water at 225 degrees for about 2 hours. I rinsed out the yarn and hung it to dry.

Reskeined,

And balled up ready to go.

This will become a Baby Surprise Jacket (BSJ) - I'm just hoping I have enough yarn for it! According to Ravelry's fabulous BSJ Wiki, it will be a near thing, but I've got some other colors in the stash that can be used or overdyed to be more appropriate. So I'm off on another Zimmerman adventure.

* What do you call your sibling-in-law's spouse anyway? Sibling-in-law once removed? These are the things that keep me up at night.

Porpoise Fur