Playing with purples

Having lost my voice, I'm home from work and reaching the aggressively bored stage of my minor illness.  Don't want to tidy the house, so I dug out some yarn and now I'm trying to dye something for my Guild Christmas swap partner.

Here's the process:

1. Skeined up three balls of Shepherd Baby Merino in cream (3x 165m: 395m). 
2. Soaked them all briefly in cold water and dunked them in the bottom of the slow cooker. 
3. Filled it up to about half full with cold water then added approx. 50mL of 10% Cyclamin.
4. Turned it on and filled it up with water which had just come off the boil.  Now simmering...

The dye is slowly exhausting into the yarn - I usually start with hot water so this feels very sloooow.  The colour is pretty consistent, just a little mottling.

Next step:

1. With water still hot, squirt in 20 mL of 10% Sarsparilla and 20 mL of 10% Desert Pea.  Some under, some at edges, some on top of the yarn.  Try to avoid stripes!
2. Quick look - not nearly enough red!  Another 20 mL of Desert Pea.  Generously squirted throughout, then left to sit and simmer.

And now the colour is looking great!  Burnt myself in the process of checking and I also now have purple hands with two red stripes.  Not very patient.

But I need to be patient and let it sit at heat for a bit.  I'll walk away, leave it on the heat for half an hour and then I can take the yarn out for the colour-admiration phase.  Followed by the cranky-detangling phase.

Making muffins will distract me effectively I think.  Sour Cherry Crumble muffins.