Speak to me of dyeing

Not as in leaving this earth, but dyeing. As in color and mordant and heat. I've never dyed fiber, unless it's by accident, like throwing the red towel in with the whites in a river of hot water. I've done that before.

I'd originally planned to have a true color artist dye my shawl, but I really want to do it myself. I've been discussing color with my daughter and she thinks trying to achieve OPI's nailpolish, Yodel Me on My Cell, is a perfect color.

I could have used a slightly wider table for blocking, but this was good enough

Some reading I've done indicates I may have some issue with the dye reaching the twisted parts of my stitches--of which there appear to be many thousands of such stitches--which will result in a more marbled instead of solid effect, but can this be ameliorated in some way? What if the color were applied with a sponge brush? Can I paint it this way and allow the sun to be the heat source? It's not like it's not hot enough around here.

My neighbor said, "wow, that's beautiful. It looks just like peacock feathers." It does, it does!

This is the one area of fiber arts I've never dabbled in and I'm completely lost and not a little nervous. The fiber is 100% superwash merino and my shawl weighs 700 grams, or 1.8 pounds. Incidentally, I'm willing to practice and have enough wool left over for several lace swatches to practice on first.

So please, if you know how to dye, won't you share your skill with me?

Sara and I are planning a trip to the Detroit Zoo for a photo shoot. Our goal is to hunt down some peacocks so we can try to get them into the pictures. They're usually pretty easy to find. We just need for the heat to die down a little.