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.

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.

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.

Autumn Colors

As the Indian summer is over and it's cold and gloomy and rainy outside, I am taking out my wool dyes and getting my knitting mojo back.This weekend I got to play with two new to me Bulgarian sock yarns. Until now I've only used the Turkish Alize Superwash 75% wool 25% nylon, 420 m / 100 g and I am quite pleased with it. But I'm always curious for something new.

The Performance yarns have the same technical description as Alize Superwash, but so far I'm happier with them than with the Turkish yarn, as far as dyeing goes. The yarn took the dye beautifully, preserving its shine and smoothness better that Alize Superwash. Of course, the major test - knitting, is still ahead, I'll be counting on my mother for reviews, as these skeins are a present from me for her.

I used one and the same method for both skeins - layering of colors on twisted hanks, using four colors for each hank, three of which were the same and done simultaneously - butter yellow, bright yellow and orange. For the fourth color I chose green for the first skein,

trying to imitate this tree in front of our building.

And for the second hank the fourth color was sort of chocolate brown - a mixture I made myself from yellow, red, blue and black. On these pictures the skeins are still a bit messed from the dyeing

and here they are reskeined, smoothed and ready to be sent. I love reskeined yarn, as it gives better idea of the distribution of the colors and how they would knit up in the future socks.

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 :)