Christmas Yarn

A couple of sock yarn skeins I dyed for my mother. She is a fan of my sock yarn and regularly asks me for new skeins to knit. This time I chose two different methods of dyeing - striped yarn and low immersion. 

For the striped yarn, I wound the skein into a long loop and soaked it into warm water with citric acid. Then I brought the water in my dye pot to boil and added the yellow color. My plan was to divide the loop into 4 parts - one long blue, followed by a short yellow, then a long green and again a short yellow, the yellow dividers half as short as the blue and green stripes. However, once I had finished dyeing the yarn, had it washed and almost dry, I did not like it. The colors were rather primary and the end result somewhat reminded me of the Brazilian flag. Not that there is anything wrong with it and its colors, it was just not what I had had in mind.

So, after some inner struggle, I took out the dye pot again, prepared another dosage of yellow dye and dipped the blue and the green parts of the yarn in yellow. Naturally, they both turned into green, two different shades. Then I dipped the former blue part of the yarn into additional blue to darken it and make it more pine green. I was finally satisfied and now it is my favourite yarn, can't wait to see it knitted into socks!

For the second skein I chose low immersion. This skein is very much like the skein I made for my husbands Nalu socks, variations of different reds, orange, wine red, some brown and pink and even an instant soft drink powder for good measure. This is a combination of shades I never tire to dye and knit and I do hope my mother would appreciate it.

One of the risks of low immersion, especially in a crowded pot, is that some of the yarn might be left white, if the dye has failed to reach it. It did happen this time as well, so I had to redo the dyeing process with this skein too, applying scarlet red to the undyed white blotches.

I'm sure these will knit into another pair of beautiful socks too. Now, that I have sent my gift yarn away, my hands itch me for dyeing some sock yarn for myself as well :)

50 Shades of Pink

Last week I finally finished a sweater out of hand-dyed yarn I started back in April and I just had to fill with stitches those needles again. I had a bobbin of 300 g of white Pecci Filati Pacchero with a very interesting content - 16% alpaca superfine, 26% merino, 13% viscose, 30% acrylic, 15% nylon. I knew some of the fibers would dye perfectly with acid dyes, some not at all (like the 30% acrylic), but I still wanted to dye it and see what would happen. I wound the yarn into three 100 g skeins and went downtown in search of red dyes.

I applied a two step method for dyeing this yarn - first low immersion dyeing with the four shades of red acid dyes, sold domestically:

• red, 
• scarlet - a bit orangy red, 
• pink - kind of diluted red, I'm not sure the chemical composition is different from the red dye
• bordeaux - which seems to be red and blue and makes for purple nuances.

This is  one of the skeins, dripping wet, after the first stage of dyeing.

After all of the three skeins had been dyed in red, I made some resist knots on the skeins and dipped them in very diluted solutions of grey dye to get a richer palette of shades. The final yarn, dry and ready to knit, is a bit pale, as only about 50% of it took any dye, but I think it's lovely and will make a nice light sweater.

I've made a raw design already and last night I started sampling to get the gauge. The yarn is quite thin - 500 m / 100 g, so I think 3 mm needles for the rib and 3.25 mm for the body make a good texture. I might sample it further with 3.5 for the body, just in case :)

It's been rainy and cold lately

and I have TWO finished projects to photograph and show you. Let's hope it will be sunnier during the weekend.

WIP - Poncho by Bergère de France

This is my current project, that I've been working on very slowly for two weeks now - Poncho by Bergère de France. I'm knitting it with my Baby Alpaca cone yarn on 4.5 mm circular needles. The first rows of 384 stitches, approx. 260 cm long, gathered on 60 cm circular needle were a torturous slog, but it's a breeze now. So far my modifications - as many others on Ravelry, I modified the pattern to knit it in the round. In the original it is knit in two parts, which are then sewn together - completely unnecessary. And knitting in the round makes it possible to purl all the time, which is my preferred method of knitting, as I knit with the yarn held in front. For this purpose I knit it from the wrong side and of course I had to modify the cables, so that they would appear as per pattern on the right side. i also modified the decreases to be slanting toward the stockinette stitch part, and not in the opposite direction, as is in the pattern.

My gauge was spot on - 16 sts and 22 rows on 4.5 mm, but I cast on 16 sts less - 25 sts for the cable section, but 23 instead of 25 sts for the stockinette stitch sections between the cables. My daughter is slim and only 5'4", so I'm trying to make it smaller than the given dimensions for the S/M size.  I'm almost at the end of Part 1 of the poncho, tonight I intend to put the stitches on a longer cord and try it on on Gaby to determine how long should the poncho be and how to proceed with the decreases. The pattern states a length of 76 cm for the S/M size, but I think 65 cm would be enough, so for Part 2 I'll probably make my decreases on every 6th row instead of every 10th row. 

I cast on with provisional cast on, as I haven't decided yet if I want a curling Stockinette stitch end or an I-cord. I'll pick up the stitches and cast them off, meanwhile adding the cuffs seamlessly to the body. The yarn - it's very soft and warm, this will be a very toasty poncho, it's a pity I didn't start it earlier to be ready for the cold January days, but there'll be other winters too :))

And something else - I hadn't dyed yarn for more than a year. This is a skein of white 100% wool, 100 g = 220 m, dyed with yellow, red and brown acid dyes for wool and silk. The color is slightly nuanced burnt orange / brick, which I love so much. I'm planning a pair of cabled legwarmers / boot cuffs for Gaby, they'll be a nice break from the monotonous work on the poncho.

Old Gold

In my stash I had three balls of beige YarnArt Pure Merino, which I had bought specifically with the intention of dyeing them in yellow. At first I considered dyeing with turmeric, but after extensive reading and some experiments I can confirm, that the yellow color, gained with turmeric, vanishes when exposed to direct sunlight within a few days. So I bought a package of yellow and tobacco acid dyes for wool. And let the idea mature for a while.
Then, late on Wednesday night, having sewn the last of the buttons to Gaby's new black & white cardigan (photo session later next week), I found my hands idle and decided to unwind the yarn and prepare it for dyeing. I knew it was late, I was tired and embarking on a time-consuming and demanding task like dyeing a sweater worth of expensive yarn that late in the day would not be advisable. And then that's exactly what I did ☻!

∟

I prewashed the yarn and soaked it in vinegar solution (1:5 approx.). Meanwhile I boiled 2 l of water in an old pot I have allotted for dyeing experiments, adding appr. 50 g of vinegar and 40 g of salt to the water.
Then I prepared three plastic containers with diluted tobacco dye, yellow dye and a mix of tobacco and yellow. Using my kitchen scales, I poured exactly one-third of each dye into three smaller disposable plastic cups.

And then I proceeded to dyeing each of the skeins individually, trying to replicate the dye distribution as exactly as possible to gain equally dyed skeins. I spread the skein on a big tin, covered with foil and  distributed the three dyes. I did not make a proper sample of the dyes and the tobacco dye turned out to be too dark and I did not like the look of it, so I made a new concentrated solution of yellow dye and added one-third of it to the hot water.

Then I placed the skein into the hot (but not boiling!) yellow water (containing vinegar, salt and yellow dye) and let it soak until the water was clear.

At all times I tried to keep the temperature of the water around 70C. When the water was clear, I transferred the skein together with the hot water into a plastic basin (to free my only dyeing pot) and repeated the whole process again and then once again. Of course, it was quite past midnight when I finished with the third skein and I was pretty tired and angry with myself for messing the tobacco dye (sad face).
I had to wait further for the yarn to cool, then I washed the skeins, soaked them in hair conditioner (another unsuccessful experiment, because it made the yarn bleed) and hung the skeins to dry in the bathroom.

The next day I considered redyeing the yarn with a touch of red to give it a brick tint, but then abandoned the temptation and decided to knit it as it was. If the end result is not pleasing, I can always get some dark brown dye and cover my dyeing mistake.

Today I started the back of a cardigan. I've read recommendations to alternate skeins to get even results, but I opted for knitting from one skein at a time. I inspected the skeins carefully and to me they look the same. I hope one skein (280 m) will suffice for the back, one for the two fronts and one for the two sleeves and thus, even if the skeins differ in color, it shouldn't be noticeable in the resulting object.

In conclusion: the dyeing method works fine, but I need to fine tune the process. I need to do further research on why the soaking in hair conditioner solution led to bleeding and is it yarn-specific or does it depend on the conditioner type and brand. Although the dye instructions explicitly do not require mordant, next time I might try mordanting the yarn in advance. I need to do better sampling of the dyes and, of course, to plan in advance and bridle my impatience.