I attended a knitting retreat in late 2018 and was totally gobsmacked by the beautiful colors of Sun Valley Fibers MCN Fingering weight. Such depth of color. Such choice of colors. This is what I purchased, influenced by the sample of Melanie Berg’s On the Spice Market that the booth showed in exactly these colors:

That’s surely enough to make any yarnie get the needles clicking.

Berg’s pattern is beautiful. I’d had it in my queue to knit almost from the time it was first released. I’m a big fan of mosaic knitting, which is what that middle section is.

I had a blast knitting this and thought I’d done a good job of working up my Spice Market.

As my favorite 4-year old would say, “Ta da!”

I debated about whether I should wet block the shawl. I often don’t block garter stitch, but it looked to me like the sections of wider color blocks at each end of the shawl could use some evening out. So I put the shawl in cold water to settle into a soak. I returned to the basin within a few minutes to see if the shawl was sinking and saw that vivid red dye had leached into the water. I removed the shawl from the water within 5 minutes of gently starting the soak.

This photo doesn’t quite do justice to how much the antler shade was stained pink. But when your eyeballs  compared the off-white sections on the red end with the off-white sections on the green side, the definitely pink cast was very obvious. And the red leachate looked particularly bad in the narrow strip of off-white between the two reddish blocks near the end of the shawl.

Knowing I might try to remedy this, somehow, I carefully dried the shawl flat–with no application of heat. Not from the furnace heating vent. Not even from the sun.

I consulted the yarn gurus on one of the main Ravelry forums and heard that some have had success removing dye by re-washing the garment using Shout ColorCatcher. This stuff:

The sheets are meant to be placed in the washing machine to catch color.

After crying in my diet Coke for a few weeks, I filled my sink basin with cold water, dropped a color catcher in, and then added the shawl. The color catcher sheet almost instantly turned a deep pink, as tons more dye leached out. I quickly removed the shawl, cleared the basin, refilled it with cold water and another sheet. I added the shawl and AGAIN, the basin filled with red and the color catcher was overwhelmed with pink. I used about 20 basins of water and 14 color catcher sheets before I gave up. The sheet (and the water) eventually turned a lighter shade of pink.

Here’s what my Spice Market turned into:

All of the antler shade, the off-white, picked up some dye and turned sort of dull looking.

And the red end of my Spice Market? A particularly yucky shade of pinkiness. I’m confident you feel my pain.

I reviewed the yarn on Ravelry and commented on the dye run off in early June. Another knitter, 2 months before me, had the same problem with the same string of shades and her On the Spice Market. There’s no reply from the company on either of our Ravelry reviews. I also private-messaged the company through Ravelry on June 2nd and have yet to receive a reply. Disappointing.

I believe I’ll likely knit another On the Spice Market. It’s a wonderful shawl pattern. I won’t use Sun Valley Fibers MCN fingering though. And color catchers doubtless have some wonderful uses. I can confidently say that they definitely sop up dye. But, for this yarn, not enough and not fast enough. I am not a happy camper. I own two other skeins of this yarn, both in strong colors. I intended to use them together. I’ll not be doing that.

I also recently washed my Crimson Leaves Cowl knit in the same yarn, in Sun Valley Fibers crimson leaves colorway. I washed it in cold water and Euculan. It bled dye like the proverbial stuck pig.