The Hot Pink Sweater

Once we knew that Monkey was a girl, I was excited to make her all sorts of clothes. Not that I wouldn't have been excited for a boy, but for some reason boy clothes are a lot harder to find good patterns for whether you are sewing or knitting.

I found some great, hot pink yarn from an indie dyer on Instagram. And I got it. Just enough for a wee little sweater and a matching hat (or two). My husband has a thing for neon so I was sure this hot pink yarn would be a winner all around.

It sort of is.

You see, I finished the sweater the other night and immediately put it on Monkey. We were having a Ladies Night with her Aunt Mabels (my sister). Monkey wore the sweater about two hours, maybe three.

It's important to note now, that Monkey is three months old and has entered the drooly stage of life. (Also the blurry stage.) So there was some minor drooling going on during the course of the night.

When we got home and took the sweater off, there was a pink crescent shaped stain on her white onesie where her drool had soaked through at the neck of the sweater.

Fortunately, I remembered that there is a way to re-set dye in yarn using citric acid. I happen to have a bottle of citric acid on hand thanks to a failed bath bomb experiment last year, so I set out to fix this cute little sweater that I was so excited about.

First I had to look up the exact instructions. The lovely Knitmore Girls had posted a tutorial several years ago that I used. I came upon it by googling 'citric acid soak', which took me to Knitting Daddy who linked directly to the instructions in the post on the Knitmore blog. Convenient for a new momma trying to fit this project in around naps, feeding, and general cuddles.


I'm not going to go into details here, but here are some pictures of the process:

Here it is in the soak, round one. 

After coming out of the microwave. It was super hot so be careful when you take yours out and unwrap it! 

If you look very closely, you can see the steam coming off the sweater. I had just taken the plastic wrap off of it.

So, if you actually read the captions you will notice that the first picture says "Round One". Yep. The water was still super pink after doing the entire process once. So I did it again. By the time I was through attempt number two, Monkey was ready for her dinner so I decided twice was good enough even if the water was still a little pink. It was much lighter pink the second round, so improvement was made!

After the whole treatment, I let the sweater block and dry. We had family in town and took Monkey along for our touristy excursion we take everyone on when they first visit. She of course wore the sweater so I didn't have to mess with a jacket and the car seat. She wore the sweater all day, through drool and spit ups galore. At the end of the day, the sweater came off and the onesie underneath.... was pink again. Just where she drooled around the neck and her wrists (she likes chewing her fingers, it's the stage she's at). I'm on the fence about doing another soak for it or not, though. I figure if I put a pink or gray or black onesie on underneath it won't be that big of a deal. Plus pink onesie number one came out of the wash all white again....


Now, I have some yarn that I made socks out of and am currently making leggings for Monkey with the rest of it. This particular yarn is notorious for bleeding and fading so I will be repeating this process with those when they are completed. If I remember to, I will do another picture along of the process for you all!