Knitting, with Dogs

Dyeing

I dyed some cotton punis the other day:

I deliberately didn't try to get a solid color here.  I soaked the punis first, made a dye solution and just poured it on kinda randomly.

I was pleased with how they came out.  One interesting thing:  I squeezed the water out of the punis when I was done dyeing, and they were pretty tightly compressed.  But they fluffled back up as they dried!  Cool.

Here's a closeup, though the color's more accurate in the first picture:

And I'd just like to extend my condolences to the family of Ruth,  the Twisted Spinster.  I'd just recently gotten to know her online, and was enjoying reading her blog about her cotton, and her vacation.  It was a huge shock to find that she died suddenly the other night. 

Peace, Ruth.  I wish I'd known you better.

Before and after

Before:

Yarn I won on a blog contest.  It's Cherry Tree Hill lace yarn.  Not bad, but there are those pinkish areas.  Not a pink person here.

After:

Overdyed with blue.  Everything evened out a little.  Less interesting in some ways, but a little more of something I'd use.

Cotton spinning continues, but the rate has slowed slightly while I think about what I want to do to get the yarn I want.

Two days of Stone Mountain spinning this weekend.  It's gonna be hot.  Y'all stay cool and hug your dads for me, ok?

New routines, new challenges

I have a new routine in the morning.

I get up and run a load of laundry first thing.  Then I take it outside and hang it on my drying racks in the sun.  With the humidity in the summer here in GA, you kinda need lots of time in the sun if you don't have a proper clothesline.

I grew up hanging clothes on a line.  It really works pretty well, though clothes tend to come out a little more scratchy than dryer-dried clothes.  But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Anyway...

Challenge #1:
A couple of thing have conspired to get me interested in natural dyeing here lately.  Since Queen Anne's Lace is blooming right now, and since I had a skein of white handspun yarn fresh off the bobbin, I decided I'd give that a try.  I stopped at the side of the road and snipped about 250 grams of flower heads and brought them home.  At home, I chopped them all up and tossed them in a pot full of water and let them simmer for about an hour.  After that, I turned off the heat and let the whole mess set on the stove overnight.  I decanted off the liquid, and got this:

It looks a little browner here than it did in real life.

My yarn was spun from some Rambouillet wool that my friend Janet gave me back in March.  There's about 750 yards here:

I used alum as a mordant, with a bit of cream of tartar as an assist.  I simmered the yarn in the mordant for about an hour, then plopped it in the dyebath and simmered for another hour, then let the whole pot sit overnight again.  Obviously I have no problem with letting stuff sit around for ages in my house.

Here's what I got:

It's a yellowish green, which was pretty much what I'd expected to get, based on the color descriptions I'd read.  I'm not a yellow-hater, so I'm actually pretty pleased with this.  If I'd had my wits about me, I'd've thrown some cotton in the pot too, just to see what would happen.  But I'm pretty witless lately, alas.

Tomorrow:  challenge #2.

Dyeing Day

Two different dyepots.
17 skeins of handspun singles from my stash. I think I originally wound them in 200 yard skeins.

BTW, see the crinkling in the yarn?  The singles have a fair amount of twist.  The original skeins had been wound on a niddy noddy and dried under tension.  They were then wound in skeins and stored for oh, about 12 years*, I guess.  And when I put them in the dyepot and they got wet, they remembered all that twist energy that they held.  For all those years.

I consider that a feature, not a bug.  :)

And no, not sure what I'm going to do with it.  I have some ideas, but I gotta see how they work out first.

*That's a conservative estimate.  It was probably longer.  I don't keep good records of this stuff...

A little more dyeing

And I haven't abandoned the dyepot either.  A week or so ago, I went down to Dunwoody Yarn because they were having a sale on some yarns, including Baby Ull.  Yeah, I'm broke, but I am absolutely DYING (without the e) to make socks from some of Cookie A's new sock patterns and I didn't have enough of anything in stash.  I have used Baby Ull for socks before.  The cheapest Baby Ull they had was bright orange.  BRIGHT orange.  (It's #18 on the color chart here.)  6 skeins at 50% off, though... what a deal.  And I have a dyepot and I'm not afraid to use it.

I didn't take any "before" pictures, but here's the "after" picture.  No more orange!

I really like the variations in color.  I used mostly red* dye, with a little plum from a previous batch thrown in at the end.  Each skein is 3 balls of Baby Ull.  When I finish Susie's shawl, I'll see if I can use these for some of Cookie's socks.  For me.  :)

(BTW, it's already sold out.**  just I think I actually drooled all over myself*** when I saw this yarn.  Holy mother of purl, that's gorgeous stuff.

*In case you haven't noticed, I've got a LOT of red dyes around the house.  Someday I'll have other colors too.

**%$*&#$!

***Is there such a thing as a yarngasm??  You know, that sudden rush of feeling that comes over you when you see a really luscious, amazing yarn in to-die-for colors?   Cause if there isn't, there should be.

Fun with Dyeing, part 3

On with the dyeing experiments.  I've got a red theme going on here.

Y'all know that Skacel Merino Lace yarn?  I had a few skeins of it in my stash in neutral colors, so I decided to use them for dyeing experiments.

First experiment:  2 skeins (about 2600 yards) overdyed with red and a couple of other colors.*  This spectacularly bad picture is the result:

It looks a bit better in person, but not much.  What you can't really see is that there are light spots where the dye didn't penetrate too well.  That's really the worst bit of it.  I was experimenting with some small dye packets I got off Ebay.  My other dyes do rather better than this.
I think this one will go back into the dyepot again.

Here it is after overdyeing:

It looks really nice in person. The red's a little richer, and instead of light sections, I've got dark sections. 

Here it is on a couple of skein holders:

(No dogs were actually traumatized in the taking of this picture.)  :)

*You'll notice I keep meticulous records of what I do.  Ha.  Haha.

Fun with Dyeing, part 2

Remember this yarn from the Dye-o-Rama experiment last year? 

(Hey, I don't really expect you to remember.  Who remembers stuff like this on other peoples' blogs??)

It was ok, but just that.  Ok.  So I decided to overdye it.  Here's what it looks like now:

The picture's fuzzy, but the colors are pretty true.  I like this MUCH better.  It's got fire!  It's got energy!  It's RED! 

Well, it's got a lot of red, anyway.  Overdyed with red acid wool dye.

Fun with Dyeing, part 1

Thanks to someone nagging gently encouraging me to post something, I hereby present the first of several fiber related posts!  [insert sound of tinny fanfare]
Dyeing project #1:

Solid white Dale Colibri yarn.  100% cotton, overdyed.

Pardon the sloppy skeins.  I took 7 balls (about 700 yards) and skeined it up into two skeins and dyed it.  I really like the shade on this.  I used Dylon fabric dye in indigo for this.  Because everyone knows that you can't use acid dyes on cotton, right?  The fiber reactive/Dylon dyes are pretty easy to use to, and don't require heat to set.  I think this color will be more useful than solid white. 

(BTW, this is yarn I took to a yarn-swap at my local SnB recently, and nobody wanted it. HA ha!)  :)

Before and After, Part 1

Before:

Hot pink merino yarn I got from Jane at our recent yarn swap.

After:

Yummy purple-y goodness with pink highlights.  :)

Jumping in with both feet

See that button in the sidebar for the Hidcote Garden Shawl KAL?  Yeah, I signed up.  Like I need an excuse to knit lace.  But I did need an excuse to knit one of Miriam's shawls.  I did start the one in IK (was that Icarus?  My mind is going gone.), but an infelicitous combination of yarn and pattern caused me to frog it all out.  But I kinda liked this shawl pattern, so I jumped in.  The KAL officially started 1/1/07, but I was too anxious to wait.  I've knitted the first chart and am about half-way through the second chart, thus:

I'm using yarn from my stash.  It's a lace-weight linen from Habu.  This is my first experience knitting with linen.  It's... interesting.  You need to keep your tension a little tight to keep your sts fairly even.  I'm normally a loose knitter, so this means I have to pay a bit more attention than usual.  But it's fine so far. 

I got a gift certificate to the Needlenook from my DH for Christmas, and it was burning a hole in my pocket.  So on Saturday I had to toddle down there and find something to spend it on.  After going round and round between the Alpaca Fino, some Noro Kureyon that I really couldn't afford, the Zephyr, and various other things, I settled on this:

It's 550 yds of Blue Heron rayon yarn with a metallic thread.  Just looking at it made me happy.  I am such a magpie -- sparkly shiny things draw me like a magnet draws iron.  And after looking around at various patterns, I settled on a very simple one from A Gathering Of Lace:

You start at one side, gradually increase till you've used half your yarn, then decrease back down to the other side.  Sweet!  The rayon is fairly heavy and drapey, and I like it very much.  I actually sat down last night with the ball of yarn on a scale and unwound half of it and tied a marker on the yarn so I'd know when I got back there.  Then much consternation ensued when I had to untangle the yarn I'd pulled off the ball.  Multiple times.  But I finished getting it wound back on the ball, and have been zipping along.  Knitting on size 6 needles goes pretty quickly!

Oh, and that "Knit From Your Stash" stuff?  I've been doing that for a bit.  I don't get to buy yarn that often, so when I do get a chance to buy yarn, you betcher boots I'm gonna buy some.  Yarn shop owners everywhere rejoice.  Ha.