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 :)

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 :)

Autumn Socks

It is getting cold and I feel like knitting socks again. This latest pair was made out of remnant yarn - I had 40 g of white superwash sock yarn and about 7 g of brown sock yarn, which I distributed for the heels of the socks. No pattern - just vanilla toe-up socks with FLKH.

Pattern: Vanilla toe-up socks, 60 sts
Yarn: Alize Superwash 47 g
Needle: 2.5 mm
Time to knit: 5 days

The dyeing of the white yarn was a random experiment - I put the cake of yarn in a bowl of warm water with citric acid and placed four egg dye tablets of unknown color, which were left from last Easter. As I really didn't know the color of the tablets and could only guess the yellow, the rest looked almost the same, it was pure luck that they turned out to be of the same color family and the end result is quite harmonious (though I'm still at a loss how did the brown happen, I'm sure there were no brown egg dyes, probably a combination of purple and green?)

And two more sock yarn skeins I dyed for my mother to knit them into socks. For both skeins I used low immersion, three color distribution and baking in the microwave oven. To make the socks identical, this time I wound the skein double-threaded and after the yarn was dyed, washed and dried, the skein was separated back into single thread cakes.

The double cake of the blue socks before separation and the two identical cakes of the purple socks after the separation.

Button Up Dress

Finally, today I found the time to take pictures of a linen dress I made about a month ago. This is probably the most creative I've gotten with sewing so far, unfortunately the pictures do not give justice to the way I feel in this dress, as imperfect as it is.

The dress is a hybrid between a free pattern by Peppermint Magazine, designed by In the Folds and Burda # 118 03 / 2013 to get something similar to a ready-to-wear dress I saw while googling button-up dresses. Initially I had decided to make the In The Folds dress, I even printed, glued and cut the pattern and then I reconsidered. I did not like the rather roomy and shapeless form of their dress and I was not sure it was at all my style.

So I googled button-up dresses and decided to take a fitted shift dress from Burda and make it into a button-up dress. I followed the way the In The Folds dress was constructed in front and made my own lining based on the lining for their dress. I also followed the very detailed and helpful instructions, provided by the Peppermint Magazine while sewing my hybrid dress. There were some tricks, concerning the attachment of the lining, which were very interesting and I would have never come up with them on my own.

The fabric of the dress is also very special to me, as this is the first fabric I've dyed before making a garment. The original fabric was linen in bright orange yellow, which was gifted to me. I loved the fabric, but the color wasn't me. So I prepared a solution of hot water and salt and bordeaux cotton dye and I worked the fabric in it for at least half an hour. I do mean "worked" - I knew from experience, that if I simply left the fabric in the pot, it would dye unevenly, so I moved and squeezed it constantly, until most of the dye was absorbed. Then I let the fabric dry and fixed the dye by ironing the fabric at the highest temp on my iron. I still haven't washed the dress, but some tests I did on the cuttings showed some loss of color during washing, so I'm still not declaring the experiment a success.

I love linen, but I'm not convinced I'll be making another dress out of linen soon, not if it creases as this linen. On these photos I had just ironed the dress and travelled in the car for less than 15 min and it's all creased - so impractical :( Next time, probably next summer, I'm thinking of a repetition of the pattern, but in chambray.

Something about the belt. Initially I hadn't thought of a belt at all, but after I finished the dress it looked to me kind of missing something, so I gathered the bigger remnants of the fabric (I had only 1.30 m and barely squeezed a full sized dress) and made a belt. But I'm not happy with it either. When I fasten it, it creates a puff on the back and tends to cover the central button. So next time one more mod of the pattern would be a belt, which is part of the dress.

I can't decide whether to keep the belt ends in front

or at the back. I can wear it with a thin leather belt too, but a waist band would be better.

Mitered Square Blanket Finished

Yesterday morning I finished the last stitches of the I-cord border of my mitered square blanket and took the blanket with us to photoshoot it on the meadows near Zlatnite mostove. The blanket is big - 190 cm long and 120 cm wide and taking a decent picture of it does require space :) According to my Ravelry notes, I started the blanket on January 6th last year, so it took me almost a year and a half to finish it, or rather to stop knitting it, as I had been considering it finished for the last month and then continued adding rows and columns of squares to it to enlarge it in length and width. And I could have continued doing so happily, but I ran out of yarn and I didn't want to spend any more money on this project. As Leonardo da Vinci put it - art is never finished, only abandoned (me being cheeky :)))

Although I didn't work on the blanket for long periods of time, it was always there as an easy project to revert to when I was feeling down on a current project or in between projects and I honestly feel somewhat sad and empty-handed having finished it. And for the first time in ages I don't have a WIP, not even an abandoned one - I'll have to think of something quickly, as I seem to have forgotten how to function without my knitting :)

The blanket weighs about 1250 g and is 24 x 15 squares, 35 stitches each. The yarn is YarnArt Jeans, 50% cotton 50% acrylic, about 90% of which is hand dyed. When I started the blanket I had just found cotton dyeing and I wanted to play with a few balls of this cotton acrylic blend I had in my stash. However, while knitting the blanket in winter I found that it was not very warm, not even close to wool warm. In terms of practicality it would be definitely wiser to choose wool, maybe some wool/nylon sock yarn. However, in terms of pleasure to knit and dye I would always choose this soft and easy to care for cotton/acrylic blend.

Pattern: Mitered square blanket
Yarn: YarnArt Jeans, 1250 g, hand dyed
Needle: 3 mm
Time to knit: 1 year 5 months

Broken Violet

One of my favourite youtube channels for yarn dyeing is ChemKnits Tutorials  - I've learned so much from Rebecca Brown! Rebecca's signature yarn is Wilton's broken violet - evidently the compound Wilton's food dyes brake during the dyeing process, as some of the dyes, like the reds, bind quicker to the yarn than the yellows and the blues. The violet dye brakes very spectacularly from deep violet to bright light turquoise blue.

We don't have Wilton's food dyes here and from my experience chemical acid dyes don't brake, but I wanted to try the experiment with some egg dyes. Last Easter I bought a couple of packets of egg dyes, however only one of them contained violet, the others had only the three primary colors and green. Anyway, I brought a pot of water with the citric acid to boil and added to it the violet capsule and one red and one blue dye tablets. I wound a 50 g ball of superwash wool sock yarn into a skein, twisted it and presoaked it. The plan was to let the twisted skein absorb first the reds and then untwist it while still in the water and let the undyed part of the yarn take the blue. Well, our dyes are obviously different from Wilton's, so it didn't quite work like that and the dye looks more as a gradient rather than broken.

However, I liked the result and as I wanted to keep it as it was, I didn't let the yarn exhaust all of the the dye and took the skein out of the pot. While the skein was dripping I noticed that the drip water was blue. So I decided that the braking was possible, I just had more reds in the pot than blues.

I quickly grabbed a second ball of sock yarn and this time I wound it into consecutive double  thread 10 g skeins, a total of six connected skeins. As I thought I had mostly blue in the water, I added another red dye tablet and began gradually adding the miniskeins:

The braking of the dye didn't work as I imagined, the dye was even redder and what I obtained was a gradient again. I like it, however, and it is my current sock project. And again, I didn't exhaust the dye and again the dripping water was bluish.

I wound a third ball of sock yarn and, without adding any more dye tablets into the water and even without presoaking it (which wasn't probably such a good idea) I began gradually dipping it into the water. This time I did get to the blue:

The red in the pot was very little and it bound to the first half of the skein, while the rest of the skein turned blue. This time I let the skein exhaust the dye. However, this is my least favourite skein of the three, I don't particularly like the shade of blue on it and I am considering glazing it with black with some resist knots for richer coloring.