adventures in yarn dyeing

 
 

"Kool-Aid stripes" - Knitpics yarn dyed with Kool-Aid
bulky yarn solids, "special dark" Malabrigo laceweight
and "80's Retro Prep" and **** for my Dye-o-rama dye swap pal
all dyed with wash-fast acid dyes

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I'm having some foot problems. With the trip to Germany scheduled for next week, I'm off to see a podiatrist this afternoon to get it dealt with asap. Meanwhile, I'm thinking happy foot thoughts by doing a little sock knitting.

While teaching a sock class this month, I surprised myself by finishing my sample sock. I actually started knitting this pair of socks four years ago (the yarn came from my Dye-o-rama Sock Yarn Swap buddy). For some reason, back in June of '06, I'd put the first sock down right before the heel. Soon thereafter, I taught a sock class, found the sock and decided to use it to demonstrate heel and toe techniques. Then the sock got buried in my teaching bag, only coming out for a quick patched on heel and toe in each successive sock class. Until this time. We had an extra week in sock class this time and so I knit the foot. For real. (Up to now, I'd just done a heel and like a quarter inch of foot and then skipped to the toe.) Giddy with success, I cast on for sock number two and finished it the following week. Pretty blue socks that match my blue blog.

A belated thanks to my Dye-o-Rama buddy all those years ago for some now much needed sock therapy.

I've just started teaching a new sock class at the store and since I needed a sock to start along with my students, I picked up my still packed swim cap bag and pulled out the retro prep yarn I dyed for my dye swap pal and myself.

Wow, I can't believe that I made that. Too cool.

I'm all packed up for a weekend away in NYC. (With the boys.) I'm not expecting to have any knitting time, but just in case, I've packed a little bag.

another wicked cool giftie my mom found
at our favorite Brooklyn boutique, Otto

It's a swim cap that has been sewn into a bag! Isn't it just the neatest thing? It feels all rubbery and spongey just like you'd expect. It's so funny. And it's the perfect size for holding a skein of sock yarn!

a skein of my 80's Retro Prep for me - wheee!

My dye-o-rama swap sock yarn is knitting up nice. There's been no major pooling and the yarn feels great. It's sport weight yarn - I'm knitting on US4s - and it really reminds me of the ArtYarns Supermerino: soft and squooshy. And it matches my blog!

This weekend was our last chance to dye our dyeorama swap yarn before being hunted down and publicly shamed for delinquency. I'm not about to get caught not doing right by my swap buddy!

I crossed my fingers and put my last skein of yarn in the dye pot. The dye gods took pity on my poor miserable yarn-ruining soul and gave me a winner.

introducing self-striping "80's Retro Prep"
and a yarn to be named later

The darker skein is the first skein I dyed for my pal. It looked so good after another wash and reskeining, I'm sending that one off to her as well. I think it might be more her colors. Telling you what I named it would give away who my pal is, so it's still a secret for now!

Bye, bye beautiful sock yarn. And thanks to Scout and the other dye swap mamas for running such a great show!

It's getting down to the wire for sending out dye swap yarn (only like 4 days left!) and I still haven't sent out my pal's yarn - yikes! Since Knitpicks is out of their color-your-own yarn (doh!) and I've used/ruined the dozen skeins I'd ordered for practice, I decided to try overdyeing the last skein I'd made. The only thing I hadn't liked about it was the unevenness of the colors. After soaking it for ages in a strong acid bath and using more concentrated dye solutions, I ended up with really nice, even greens.

Hey Mikey, she likes it!

But what the picture doesn't show, and what I didn't see until the skein was all dry, is that there are little speckles in the blue. I don't think I can send it. Poop!

In the meantime, I got my dye swap skein from Roxanne. Look what beautiful blues she made for me!

the pic she posted here is much better
with all this rain here again, my camera couldn't do it justice

(You can even get some of this yarn on her online store or from her etsy store!) I love the yarn, but I feel bad, because apparently my preferences were difficult. Sorry, Roxanne! I love pretty much everything in her store, so however I phrased things must have made me sound like the pickiest person on earth. I do love the results though. Thank you, thank you!

So it's pretty blue socks for me and back to the drawing board for my dye pal. Anyone have another dozen skeins of Knitpics color-your-own to sell me? ;0)

I picked up some more dyeing supplies at IKEA yesterday - a new pot and the most comfortable plastic gloves that ever were.

And I finally got down to working on my dye-o-rama pal's yarn.

That was my practice skein. It's not optimal, but it's okay. I'm gonna try the real thing tonight!

Knitbud Lisa trusted me with three gorgeous hanks of Malabrigo laceweight, which she couldn't stand because they were, in her opinion, the color of pee pee.

the Handpainted Yarn folks call it "butter"

She had seen the chocolate brown skein of bulky weight that I dyed last week and asked if I could turn that pee pee into chocolate.

Overdyeing the yellow resulted in a dark chocolate brown - I'll call it special dark - with lighter red/brown sections where the original yellow was quite light. I bet this is going to knit up really nice in lace. Hope she likes it!

Finally, I can show you the yarn I dyed last week! After five solid days of rain (yes, it's still raining) the last little skein finished drying.

A delicious chocolate brown, blue blog blues, and a strawberry skein dyed with leftover red dye. (Look at how they match my new sockapaloooza socks - wow, did Kate get my colors right, or what?!) I've got no ideas as to what to do with these skeins of not-so-soft bulky yarn dyed in different colors. But I love them. I think I may put a shelf on the wall over my yarn stash just to show off these big bundles of color. That I made.

Well, sorry to have turned my blog into a dyeing blog. I really am knitting up a storm, but I can't blog about my design projects just yet. I can however dye while designing and knitting, so some days that's about all I've got to talk about. Except the adorable card "the boys" gave me for mother's day.

And the gift was perfect too!

chocolate brown - yummy!

Thanks to fellow Knitsmith, Amber, who brought some bland Brown Sheep 6-ply to the Knitsmiths swap, I got to spend a few hours trying out different dyes this week.

dye me!

Up to now, I'd only used the ProChemical washfast acid dyes. But I'd heard so many good things about their one-shot dyes that I thought I'd give them a go. I chose some beautiful blues, mixed the dyes, and got cookin'.

the scene of the dyeing

cooking blues

I think I'm finally getting the hang of this dyeing thing. Of course, one color immersion dyeing is about as easy as it gets, but still, the whole process went a lot smoother this time. And I'm starting to feel like I might be able to try the handpainting again. Maybe I'll even try mixing my own colors. Better get some more practice yarn!

Oh, the results? You'll have to wait until tomorrow to see the finished skeins! I'm hoping that the rain will hold off today so I can hang them all outside to finish drying.

Oh yeah, immersion dyeing is the way to go for me. More control. Less mess. Just the colors I wanted!

Now I'm excited! I'm off to wind more yarn. I'll mix more colors tonight after the boys go to bed. And tomorrow we dye.

Okay, well first my host's server is having a little problem, so the blog might be mostly dead for a while. But just in case you can read this...

I tried my hand at using acid dyes! Pardon the lack of pictures, but I had giant gloves and a face mask on so wasn't really able to pick up the camera during the process. I didn't want to spend the time winding up a striping skein for my very first outing with acid dyes, so I thought I'd try hand-painting. I looked for some instruction online as to how much dye solution to make, found very few really helpful numbers, and then went ahead and did my best on my own. It did not go well.

there were supposed to be 3 colors, including white

Don't know if my skein was too wet or my dye solution too thin or what, but it no workie for me. Everything ran together into the brown poopy mess above. Yuck! I think I'm going to stick to immersion dyeing.

And just so my dye-swap pal doesn't get the wrong idea and think that poopy brown is like my favorite color, let me say here that my favorite colors are blues (natch), reds, pinks, oranges, and white. And I really prefer bright, rich solids and stripes to variegateds. So no poopy brown, please. Cause I've already got a skein of that!

I finally received a package yesterday of sock yarn I'd ordered in March after my return from Germany. Yes, more Regia Canadian Colors and Classic Canadian Colors. I decided to buy some of the colorways I hadn't seen in stores on my trip. I now officially have too much sock yarn. I almost got some more Koigu at the store yesterday. Lucky for me I put it back, because...

The next package I got was a box stuffed with color-your-own fingering weight yarn from Knitpicks! And that was followed up by a starter dye kit from the nice folks at ProChemical. Instead of buying more sock yarn, I can now focus on getting pots and gloves and saran wrap and everything I need for the dye swap. Who's dyeing this weekend??

I'm squeezing in (literally!) a little knitting design between the boys' Lego projects. They're always needing help putting axles together and taking bricks apart, so it's best if I don't go too far when I'm working.

The fruits of our labors? Well, all the main pieces of the sub set have been built and shown to friends and neighbors. B put together the big submarine and a little submersible that can fit inside it. Then he let his brother build a wicked cool robot sub, thereby earning himself another point for sharing. Clever boy!

And I snipped off a repeat of my hand-dyed Kool-Aid yarn (before giving it to my best knitbud, Lisa, for her birthday) to see how it knits up. Stripey goodness!

I'm joining Scout's DYE-O-RAMA dye-along and I'm so excited!! (Sign-ups start at 6pm today - check out Scout's blog for details!) I've already ordered some acid dyes to make a few practice skeins with real dye. I couldn't wait though, so yesterday I tried out some striping with Kool-aid and Knitpics Dye-Your-Own yarn sent to me by Kristen.

Following the suggestions of a few striping tutorials (see below), I did some math, set up chairs about 9 feet apart, and then wound a giant skein around them. I marked off where each of the four colors should go and then took the skein off the chairs ready to dye each section a different color.

The boys thought this was so cool that when I was done they insisted I set up chairs for them to do "yarning" and make "yarn houses". They had so much fun, they kept yarning and reyarning their houses (and ice cream stores and cages) for an hour until lunchtime. (As all the chairs in the house were tied together, we had to have a picnic lunch in the living room.) And while they were playing and we were eating, the yarn soaked up the Kool-Aid.

First the grape and strawberry at opposing ends. Then orange and berry blue on the other two sides.

The blue and the orange really are the best colors of the bunch. The purple didn't dye that evenly and isn't as bright. But I guess that's how this dyeing thing goes.

It sure is a fun skein of yarn though. I'm anxious to see how it stripes!

These tutorials were a great help:
Scout's striping tutorial
Eunny's striping tutorial
Streets and YO's striping tutorial
Dyeing with Kool-Aid How To
Knitty's Kool-Aid tutorial