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 :)

Fire Socks

My third pair of socks this year, dyed with the help of a sock blank. My husband is a sucker for warm colors, especially orange, and has been requesting some fiery socks forever. So, for my third sock blank I chose a warm dark to light to dark transition from dark red wine to dark chocolate, or at least that was the plan.

What I realized once I had finished the painting of the blank was, that this scheme placed the lightest color - the yellow, in the middle of the blank, which would probably work well for a scarf or a hat, but for socks it meant that the lightest color would be at the heel, and this is far from ideal. I debated with myself whether to cut some of the brown and move it to the heel, but firstly I didn't know how much to cut, and secondly - that would have inevitably broken the color transition. In the end I decided to go with the flow and knit the socks as I had dyed the yarn and, hopefully, learn a lesson about better planning next time.

Pattern: Fire Socks (personal pattern, 64 sts)

Yarn: Alize Superwash, 72 g, hand-dyed 

Needle: 2.5 Addi circular needles

Time to knit: one week

Despite the definitely awkward color placement, husband loves the new socks and declares them his favourite. Until the next newer pair of socks, I suspect :)

Berry Punch Yarn

About 10 years ago I did my first yarn dyeing! And probably because of beginner's luck, but it was one of my most successful dye jobs. The yarn was pure merino, I used three saches of instant drinks (a local analogue of Cool Aid) and I knitted a pair of fingerless gloves with it, which are still very much in use and still my most favourite late autumn - early spring gloves.

Husband and I were talking about these gloves on our hike on Vitosha recently and it occurred to me that I had never tried to recreate that dye job. I had some white Yarnart Superwash sock yarn at hand and I thought a pair of socks, matching the gloves was actually a very good idea.

I found my blog posting, read the instructions and went out in search for STEP instant drinks. As we never buy such products, I hadn't followed the market. Unfortunately (for me), it turned out that in the 10 year interval the Red Grapes variety had been discontinued. However, I found another drink by the same manufacturer, which contained two of the three E artificial colours of Red grape - the red and the blue, but it lacked the chocolate brown.

I prepared the yarn and the drinks according to my own instructions and dyed the yarn. Then washed it and let it dry. The resulting skein (shown on the last picture) was a bit redder and paler than the mitts, so I made a light solution of bordeaux and brown acid dyes and dipped the whole skein in it. I am much happier with the overdyed skein (shown on the first picture), but I'll wait until tomorrow and natural light to decide if I want to leave it as it is or deepen further the brown and bordeau shades.

Alize Striped Socks

The sweater I started last month is not coming as I imagined it and I don't feel like knitting it any more. So - I knit socks. I've been hearing people praise Alize striped sock yarn, so I bought a skein and decided to test it.

I knitted the socks as I usually do - toe-up, vanilla socks, 64 sts, fish-lips kiss heels, 1x1 ribbed cuffs with tubular cast off. I'm happy with the final result and I hope the recipient will like them and wear them, but I don't think I'll repeat the experience. Part of the joy of knitting socks for me is dyeing the yarn and then watching it unfold its colors and turn into a sock. So my next socks will be again hand-dyed socks.

I took the finished pair (they haven't even been blocked yet) with me today on our hike, hoping to take a few pictures of them if a chance presented itself. And as soon as I saw this pile of hay stacks I knew I had to photograph the socks - not that the pile is that beautiful, but it's surely unusual and not a background I come upon every day :)

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.

Gryffindor Sock Yarn

The first of my latest sock yarn dyeing experiments. When Gaby saw the gold and burgundy stripes her immediate reaction was that these were the Gryffindor colors, so I'm calling these socks Gryffindor. The color scheme is dark red brown for the toes, heels and cuffs and equal gold, dark amber and burgundy stripes for the foot and leg.

A few words about the process, as it was not the usual and is an example that not every failure is irreversible. The semi solid brown yarn started as an experiment in speckling. I had watched a video for using salt-shakers for speckling yarn and I bought a new salt-shaker, mixed salt, citric acid and red, blue, yellow and orange acid dyes, sprinkled the wet yarn and then microwaved it. The result was most unsatisfactory, probably because the salt shaker had very wide openings and instead of speckles I got splotches of color, the yarn looked ugly. I washed it and let it dry, had a hard look at it and decided to overdye it. I had some leftover dye solutions from another dyeing job, so I mixed some of them, I think some dark red, caramel and brown and overdyed the yarn. Initially I was bummed that it turned out so dark, but now I love it.

After I had decided that this yarn would become toes and heels, I needed to dye yarn for the body of the socks. My plan was to make three 4-round stripes in yellow, orange and red. I measured how much length of yarn I needed for one round of vanilla socks my size, then I wound the skein double and then into a very wide circle, so that every round contained approx. 12 rows when knitted into socks. Then I dyed one-third in yellow, waited for the dye to be exhausted by the yarn, then added the orange color and then the red. The yarn looked OK, but kind of childish with three primary colors and it didn't match the dark brown.

So, I made a solution of caramel color I had left from a mixture for a previous sock yarn and soaked the whole skein in it. The colors darkened and were definitely better looking, but the yellow and the orange became very similar. So I made one more solution with pure brown and dipped the orange and red sections in it, leaving the yellow outside the pot. Thus I got the dark amber from the initial orange and the burgundy from the initial pinkish red. Now I am very, very pleased with the colors. The orange family of colors is very much my thing!

And just a couple of pictures of yesterday's cake - this is the long weekend of the Liberation Day, our national holiday, so I made a fruit cake in the colors of the flag. We love cakes, so any excuse occasion for celebration is welcome :)

Autumn By The Road Socks

I finished the first of the two pairs of sock yarn I dyed with pre-knitted by me sock blanks. The colors were inspired by an autumn photo of trees by a road and I love them. Although Gaby is posing for me for this photosession, the socks are for me and on my feet as I'm writing this post :)

For these socks I used my new addi 8" circular needle and I have pretty mixed feelings about it. It is just too small and uncomfortable and knitting with it was actually slower than magic loop knitting with my addi 80 cm circular needle.

I definitely prefer the longer needle for the toes, heels and cuffs of the socks, for the body of vanilla socks I'm willing to give it another try to get used to it. I know there are many sock knitters that prefer such short needles.

Pattern: Vanilla socks with Fish Lips Kiss Heel
Yarn: Alize Superwash hand dyed, 50 g
Needle: 2.5 mm
Time to knit: 4 days

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.