100 Days of Making: Day 87

#day87 of #100daysofmaking: I made a Newborn Vertebrae by Kelly Brooker for a coworker's baby shower. I decided last minute (as always) to make something and had less than a week to get it done so I searched my stash for yarn and found my boy colored yarns are sorely lacking. This yarn is from a yarn club I joined on etsy in 2012. I found it by doing a random search for yarn clubs and though I did look at reviews, I won't try a yarn dyer that hasn't been recommended by other sources because I was not terribly happy with this club - at the time because after three months, I had three lots of brown yarns. While I don't mind getting colors out of my comfort zone in random clubs, I think even if I had lived brown yarn that three months of a three month club in the same color is a bit repetitive and unimaginative. I filed them away and haven't given them much thought until I needed boy colored yarn. I then encountered problem number two with this yarn: after an hour of working with it, my hands were turning pink from leaking dye! I hemmed and hawed about what to do because I was actually really loving the color, it's a tonal reddish brown with almost black mixed in and it looks great knit up. Also I didn't really have time to start over with another yarn. So I kept on, hoping I would find a way to fix the bleeding once it was done. I soaked a bit of the yarn in water and it bled - I dried it and I soaked it and it bled - and on. So washing it a time or two was not going to help. So I looked up Jasmin and Gigi's citric acid fix, made a stop by Whole Foods to get the citric acid, and when I was done with the knitting (in record time, 2 1/2 days!) I soaked it in acid water. I knew it was going to work because from the second I dropped it in there, there was no bleeding. I microwaved it too though to set it and still no bleeding after I rinsed it. Success! The yarn softened up considerably with washing and feels very nice. I had no trouble with the newborn vertebrae pattern (I previously have had issues with the fingering weight versions of the baby vertebrae - the sleeves end up way too wide) though I did make the sleeves longer than called for in the pattern because 9 cm seemed too short. I gave it to my coworker today and she liked it!