Sock Yarn for My Mother

I hadn't played with wool dyes for quite a while and I hadn't realized that I actually missed it.
My mother loves knitting socks and when I was preparing my parcel with the Rhapsody blouse, I decided to add two skeins of sock yarn, dyed by me. For both skeins I used low immersion techniques and I wound the yarn into very long skeins, using the "walk between two chairs" method :) The yarn is Alize Superwash, 75% wool, 25% polyamide.

I dyed the first skein in the pot, adding a range of warm colors - yellow, orange, red, pink, scarlet and brown. I tried to distribute them randomly, hoping that there will be minimal pooling when knit into socks.

I am very happy with the final warm combination of colors and can't wait to see what will become of these.

For the second skein I used again low immersion, but in a tray - yellow and green in both ends and variations of chartreuse between. And i also added orange speckles to this skein. I love the color combination, but I worry that the color distribution will definitely result in pooling.

Inspired by these skeins, I made another one for myself, but more about it next time :)

The Chocolate Color

Let me start with the ascertainment that ever since I started dyeing yarn, I've overdyed every beige yarn I've bought, as well as a beige cotton shop bought sweater I had :) Beige turns out to be a color I'm drawn to buy but not to wear - neutral drab colors are not for me, it seems.

A few months ago I came upon Hipster - a shawl pattern by Joji Locatelli and I immediately fell in love with it. I've been following Joji's podcast and admiring her creativity a lot, she's one of my main inspirations to start sewing again, as apart from a talented knitter and designer, she's also a fearless beginner seamstress.
So, when I was browsing my favourite online yarn shop for tweed for another project I came upon a sale of this beige Italian bobbin tweed and I grabbed 200 g of it for Hipster. But the moment it arrived I knew I had to overdye it (again!). I experimented with at least a dozen of small cuttings from the yarn, shifting it from tobacco yellow to dark purple, until I settled on chocolate. And I'm loving it. This is my current WIP, but more about it and the yarn in (I hope) a coming soon posting :)

And while I still had chocolate color on my mind I finally decided how to overdye the viscose yarn I had bought for my mother. The result of another sale purchase - 6 skeins of baby blue viscose-acrylic yarn, three for me and three for my mother, were waiting to be overdyed. The yarn is very soft, the color is nice, but neither mother nor I would wear this baby blue. I had been struggling for a week with the decision, having in mind, that unlike the wool, which is so easy to dye, viscose acrylic blends take dye differently and more difficultly. And of course they require dyes for cellulose based yarns. 

To ensure good cover of the blue, I dyed these skeins in two steps - first I dyed the three skeins solid brown, washed them and hung them to dry to ascertain that they had the color I wanted (wet viscose looks much much darker than dry viscose and I wanted to be sure). Then I dip glazed them in concentrated black for a more variegated final color.

I think they turned out quite nice, with deep saturated color. Because I dyed each skein separately, there are some variations between the skeins and as with all hand-dyed yarns it would be recommendable to be knitted with alternation.

I was curious, so I made two samples to check the gauge. The yarn is thin - 400 m / 100 g, so it could be knitted with a single thread or with two threads held together. I was leaning towards the thicker option, but in the end I like the single thread sample better. Of course, it's up to my mother to decide which she prefers.

Now I'm off to pack all the yarns I dyed for my mom lately and send them to her to keep her busy during the coming months.

Into The Sea, Galaxy, М&M Colorways

I dyed some yarn these last two days - three 50 g skeins, intended to become socks.

Into the Sea
It pains me how dull and washed look the colors of this skein in the photos, in real life they are so vivid and neon. For this skein I combined two methods: first, I twisted the skein, soaked it in water and dipped it into sea green dye (blue egg dye with some green egg dye). I let the twisted skein soak most of the green and then untwisted it, so that the white parts could be dyed in the remaining pale blue. When all of the dye was absorbed, I added some acid dark blue, to tone down the neon effect of the egg dyes.

Then I took the yarn out of the dye pot and added some black dye to the hot water, made three knots in the skein and dipped it in the black for some black glazing and richer depth of color. The Dark nuances, combined with the neon green and neon blue really make it a spectacular skein, I'm so impressed with this method of dyeing.

Galaxy
For the second skein I combined hand painting and fixing the dye in the microwave oven, and then dipping half of the skein into dark violet to get the cosmic dark sky color:

I am in love with this skein, violet and yellow are such an impressive combination.

M&M
For this third skein I used again hand painting with a syringe. I made three dye solutions of the primary colors yellow, red and blue, diluting the dyes into citric acid water. The yellow crushed, so I made a forth solution of yellow food coloring and then randomly dyed first one side, then flipped the skein and dyed the other side, using the syringe. Although the acid yellow looked dull and brown in the cup, it turned nice orange-y yellow in the skein and the food color yellow is a bit more lemon-y.

After covering as much as I could of the yarn, I wrapped it and fixed the colors in the microwave.

I'm really happy with my yarns and curious to see them into socks :)

Speckled Space Socks

I'm having trouble with my Wisteria Sweater (more about this in another blog post) and in order to cleanse my palate, so to speak, I knitted a pair of socks. Socks are those small mindless knits that can totally recover one's passion for knitting and are such an instant gratification. Even in  this case, when I utilized a yarn I had dyed about two months ago not very successfully.

The yarn was my second attempt at rainbow speckled yarn - I soaked the yarn in warm water and citric acid, then placed it on wrap foil and sprinkled it with dry dye powder - red, yellow and blue. The theory is that the speckles of dry dye would stick to the yarn and where they combine all the colors of the rainbow would appear. However first I did not manage to sprinkle the dye evenly and then I made a very bad mistake - I was too impatient and I after I had microwaved it I brought the yarn to the sink to wash it before it had cooled down. As a result the dye residue, which is usually substantial when using dry dye, stuck to the still warm and acid yarn and made it look dirty instead of white with colorful speckles.

For more than a month the yarn just sat in my project bag, rejected and unloved. I knit a small sample, hoping that when knitted it would look better - but nope, it was still grey dirty. So eventually I overdyed it with yellow and then with orange. I thought I had played enough with it, so I finally cast on the socks I had planned for it - the Speckled Space Socks, a free pattern on Ravelry.

But I still didn't like the color of the socks, they looked like unappetizing mish-mash. Half-way through my first sock I had a mini crisis, wondering whether this wretched yarn was worth all that trouble. In the end I decided to finish the socks (which turned out a bit short because of the limited quantity of yarn) and then to glaze them or eventually overdye them. I dipped the finished soaked socks into hot and very acid red dye bath and let them absorb the dye. Now I finally love them - the darker speckles were preserved and the color turned layered and interesting. My husband liked them so much that he wants a pair of the same color for him too :)

Pattern: Speckled Space Socks by Amanda Stephens
Yarn: Alize Superwash 50 g, 210 m
Needle: 2.5 mm
Time to knit: 6 days

WIP: Wisteria Sweater

I've started a new sweater with hand dyed yarn. During the years I've significantly improved my abilities in designing my own sweaters and now I'm pretty comfortable when I plan a sweater or a cardigan bottom-up. But I've shied away from top-down designs and know little about these constrictions, and more specifically how to make the front lower than the back. But it was high time to dip my toes into these design challenges too, so here is my first self-designed top-down raglan with a round neckline.

I started the sweater imitating Boknits' version of Water's edge cardigan. I had made some calculations for the neckline, based on my experience with designing it bottom-up. But due to my inexperience I felt unsure in the result and hurried the increases, so the neckline is not as low and smooth as it might have been if I had followed my initial notes. I'll know better next time.

When I reached the waist I decided that I'd prefer a lower gathered panel, like in Kim Hargreaves' Swallow, so I continued knitting and gradually increasing at the sides until I reached the beginning of the hips. Now I'm at the peplum part and so far I'm loving it.

The yarn is a mix of two different Zegna Baruffa bobbin yarns - Merino extrafine 1500 m / 100 g, which dyed perfectly and Mousse 1400 m / 100 g, which is sort of mohair and almost didn't absorb the dye. For the dye bath I used the plum dye from my previous dye job and some light red. Because I first skeined the two yarns together and then dyed the skein I suspect the merino absorbed the dye and left little for the mohair. The latter remained like a light lilac cloud over the deeper coloured merino. Frankly, I was initially very disappointed, looking at the skein, but as I began to knit it I grew to like it.

The sweater is very light - I've almost finished the body and so far I've knit about 80 g of the yarn! However I noticed that with the change of the number of stitches around the body I got some pooling of colors around the waist. It's not that noticeable but next time I should better follow the advice indi dyers often give - alternate skeins.

And to improve my dyeing knowledge and experience I recently bought this excellent book by Felicia Lo. My next dye job will probably be an attempt to replicate the yarn on the cover.

Marbled Pastels

I got an idea in my head to knit another Haruni for a present - my third Haruni, I really love this triangular shawl. And I imagined it in light pastel colors, combined around turquoise. I googled color combinations and I really liked this marble, so I tried to recreate it.

The yarn is Italian bobbin merino extrafine, which I have used before. It is super soft, 4-ply not very twisted yarn - a characteristic, which makes it divine to wear, but it has also a tendency to pill.

I was very happy with the yarn in the pot, but as it dried and I began to knit with it, I've been having my doubts. The yarn was a bit crowded in my small dyeing pot - 200 g is a bit too much for it, and the colors came very light with lots of white in between.

It looks colorful in the skein

but the knitted texture is very colorless, the purples and pinks are almost indiscernible. And these are so not my colors :( I love warm colors, I'm a red - brick - orange person, these cold pastels are too babyish for my taste. So far I'm planning to knit the shawl and if i hate it - I'll redye it into a solid darker color, probably dark teal or turquoise.

Rust and Teal

Yesterday and today I spent hours experimenting with yarn dyeing. The color scheme was rust and teal and the technique - self-made sock blanks.

For the first blank I folded the strands into two and then again into four stranded cake. My new cake-winder was definitely very useful. Then I knitted the yarn into a simple garter stitch blank.

The color scheme I chose was teal and rust.
For the teal I mixed green and blue 1:1. This is where I faulted and should have been braver to correct it - my teal turned more green than blue and I should have dipped the green end into a little blue to accentuate the teal color, but I didn't, being afraid not to ruin it.
The rust was 8 orange + 2 red + 1 brown and it turned as I wanted it.

This is how the blank looked still wet after the dyeing - dip dyed on the stove:

I unraveled it and wound it on my niddy-noddy to dry. This was the dry yarn in the morning, four-stranded:

The yarn, separated into two-stranded yarn:

And finally separated into singles:

And wound into cakes ready to be knit with:

I wound the second ball of Alize Superwash into 8-stranded yarn and knit it into a garter stitch wider and shorter blank to be dyed in stripes. This is the color scheme I chose for the stripes:

In the evening, the process of dyeing. This time I hand painted the stripes and then nuked it into the microwave for 1:30 + 2 + 1 min.

The yarn cool and ready to be washed:

Dry and finally separated back into singles:

And the cakes.

Final thoughts: very labour consuming method, rather intense on the yarn. The dyeing of blanks produces interesting speckled effects because of the knitted texture of the blanks. However I am not likely to try it again soon, I believe I've satisfied my curiosity as far as this method of dyeing is concerned.