The last Qiviut I got is a large batch of a single natural colour – I would describe as a greyish-brown.

I decided to dye a few skeins to use for accents.

I’ve never dyed dark natural fiber before, and Qiviut is very expen$ive so I didn’t want to dally to long on a learning curve.

So I decided to first see what compare the Qiviut to samples from my library of dyes, so see if it was related to any particular colour. The most cohesive chit was the Mouse Grey.  Various other blacks, charcoals, browns and greys didn’t look as much from the same family to the Qiviut.

This kind of surprised me, as I usually work with Mouse Grey in the lower values – much lighter than the Qiviut colour I would be trying to dye over.

I gambled two  100 g skeins and used a deep intensity of the dye – 3 tsp for the 2oo grams of fiber (70% Qiviut, 20% Merino 10% Nylon).

That was much more dye than I needed, and even after a good long simnmer there was a lot of dye not exhausted.

There was quite a bit of cucky on the side of the pot and in the bath itself. The residue was coloured somewhere between bad coffee and strong tea.

Here is how the yarn turned out:

I’m very pleased with the result. The dyed skein, to me, looks like a deeper value of the natural colour on the right.

Oh – see the yarn I tied the skeins with – that’s a worsted weight pure crap wool I bought  a zillion pounds of to learn with when I got my first sock knitter. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.  Still, I have enough of it to tie skeins for dyeing well into the next century.

The dyed skein in the photo is still damp, though I did spin it out in the washing machine after soaking in the rinse water. It may dry a wee bit lighter.