After the Bunny

by Lynne of cozycottagecreations

Although Easter was a month ago, I'm still relishing the results of my new favorite Easter-time activity: the dying of the wool. Yes, I said wool and not eggs. That used to be my favorite activity but it was demoted to second place once it dawned on me that while my children diligently dipped their hard boiled eggs into cups of vibrant vinegar, I could be doing the same with my wool! I had just ordered 5 lbs of core wool from West Earl Woolen Mill in Pennsylvania (they are the best source of wool I have found), so with an abundant supply at hand, experimentation became the name of the game.

Basically, I pulled out 1 or 2 oz. of natural wool, placed it in a plastic bowl, then saturated the wool with whatever color I was wanting to dye with (about 1/8 of a cup of dye or less).

Once it seemed the dye had been absorbed into the wool (15-20 seconds), I covered the wool with warm water and let that soak for about 15 minutes.

After soaking, I microwaved the mixture for 6 minutes.

When I took the wool out of the microwave, it was hot to the touch, so I used tongs to carefully rinse it under cold water, both to cool it off, help set the color, and rinse out some of the vinegar.

Then I laid it on a towel on the kitchen counter to dry.

I found that mixing colors, both for the first time through and once a batch had already been dyed yielded interesting results, but not always what was expected. Sometimes, especially with the light pinks and green colors, the first results were not as vibrant as I was wanting, so I added more vinegar to the dye bath and sent it through the microwave again. I am so thrilled with the results and can not wait to find a project for this wool. I even went out the next week and bought egg dying kits on sale so I don't have to wait until next Easter to dye more wool!