800y matte 8/2 cotton (laceweight, 800y/100g) from Earth Guild
Dharma Procion MX dyes

Washed in hot water and Synthropol, rinsed well.
Soaked overnight in water (and not enough soda ash).
Soaked in soda ash solution with correct proportions (1c: 1 gallon water) for ~1hr, wrung out. Save solution.
Dunked in sage green (#140) at roughly 2% owg (~1 level tsp, current scale only measures whole grams so not very accurate) in 1 gallon water with 1c salt for ~1 min.
Rinsed and wrung out--wet but not dripping.
Wound into a ball as loosely as possible (difficult to do with wet cotton, feels so dense no matter what).
Soaked again in soda ash solution for ~1hr, excess squeezed out.
Soaked in olive drab (#32) at 2.5% owg (~heaping tsp) in 1 gallon water (no salt--ran out) for 1hr, rolling occasionally.
Rinsed and squeezed until clear.
Skeined (into four 200g mini skeins just in case another dye bath might be needed) and washed with Synthropol in warm water.

Thoughts:

• very subtle, barely perceptible color change. Not sure how I feel about this…I really dislike abrupt/stripey ombre so I love the slow progression, but wish the dark green end was darker and that the dye had penetrated further. Almost used a darker moss green instead of the olive and wish I had--the color is exactly what I was hoping for when the yarn is wet but of course dries much lighter.
• so. much. winding. Maybe it would go faster with a niddy noddy or swift, but with only a warping board this took most of the day.
• find more accurate scale

Was really unhappy with the color once dry (no good photos as it was getting late and the light was fading); only the first 5ish yards of the dark end had been saturated…the rest of the color change was very heathered-looking…which I’d be fine with if the color was deeper and the ombre more pronounced, but the two together just looked lame and weak. So…
Back into the soda ash for 30min.
Didn’t overdye the lightest mini skein--left it the sage color.
Plunked the other three into the same olive dye bath from earlier.
Pulled the first one out after just a few seconds and rinsed.
Repeat x2--the skeins were in the dye only as long as it took me to rinse the previous one (~1 min).
Rinsed in Synthropol.

Thoughts

• much, much better…but somewhat tangled even though I used six ties for each mini--those connecting bits of yarn really create a big mess…use more ties for each mini or even better, retie into one hank asap (if this is even possible with heavy, wet yarn while wearing gloves and rushing to rinse before the color can set darker)
• the cotton feels dry, likely from all that soda ash? Plan ahead to limit exposure