Boom!

Dyed tussah silk skein

See that skein there? Isn't it pretty? Such nice colors. Too bad it broke into about fifteen pieces when I tried to dye it. I folded up the skein, stuck one end in some silk dye and let it wick up. And then microwave set it. From the other room, I hear funny little noises. They sound suspiciously like the microwave arcing. Each of them was my skein blowing itself to bits. And every break was at a color transition.

It's normal for dyes to wick differently, it's why a marker makes a funny rings on a wet paper towel. But obviously there was something that made the edge absorb more energy in the microwave. I had it on Defrost. It wasn't even all that dry.

I'm very sad. Now I have to do it all over again. I could try to splice it together but it's hard to get the position of the dyed areas properly aligned and I have to assume even the parts that didn't break are weak. Fortunately it only took two days to spin.