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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ordering three skeins of sock yarn in the same colorway, even if hand dyed, leads one to expect a certain minimum consistency. So, the real work of dyeing, as opposed to just having fun with color on little skeins, has begun.
Here I’m beginning to paint of skeins of . . . oh, what shall I call it? Red’n'orange’n'yellow for now. I’ve put on pure scarlet at the end of skeins and am now adding a mix of scarlet plus some yellow dye.
A lot of rubbing and massaging is involved in getting reasonably smooth color transitions.
Here they are all done, with the reference skeinlette closest to you. Not an exact match, but reasonably close. There are three skeins for Main Street Yarns and one for my Etsy shop, and that’ll be updated this week with lots of new stuff. I’ll keep you posted. After the dye is applied, the skeins are sprayed with vinegar, wrapped up tightly in plastic, then steamed, cooled, and washed.
I’m also trying another technique, that gives rather more random results. For this, the yarn is put into a shallow vinegar and water bath that is brought up to temp, then the dye is poured onto the yarn. Each pour is simmered until the color is exhausted, then a new pour can be added if desired. For this skein, I poured the light blue first, then the dark. This bath had a lot of vinegar in it and I didn’t move the yarn around after the dye was poured in, so the stripes are pretty distinct.
This skein only had chartreuse poured on it, but the yarn was smooshed around as the dye was added, so it got more diffused. Also, the bath had less vinegar, so the dye struck more slowly.
Fun, eh?
The yarn is here, the yarn is here!
The postal person stealthily put it on my porch, and there it was when I opened to door to walk up the driveway to check the mail. I know what I’m doing tomorrow . . .
Meanwhile,
the giant skein of overdyed blue finally dried, and taking advice from the commenters, I decided to test the limits of the All-Powerful Reeling Machine and see if it could hold all 1200 yards of yarn. It was doing well, but then the yarn got a bit tangled in one of the wire loops holding the skeiner together and it frayed rather severely. I went ahead and broke it off and started a second ball.
Here they are, enjoying the sun on what is likely to be the last warm day of the year.
Would a standard sized ball winder be able to hold about 1200 yards of fingering weight yarn (11 ounces) in one ball? Having dyed this lovely, continuous, knot-free skein, I’d hate to have to break it.
When a weaver says, “I’m destashing, would you like to come get stuff before I take it to the Goodwill?” always say yes. Fellow member of Seaview Weavers Heather did just that, and not only did I get some nice fabric, but I seriously scored in the yarn department. Among other goodies, a two pound cone of blue-grey fingering weight alpaca, which promptly set me thinking about knitted shawls. The pattern I decided on for the first one is the Seascape Shawl from Fiber Trends, but I wanted the yarn to be bluer, not so grey.
Here’s the cone, after winding off a shawl’s worth of yarn. Good thing it was on the floor, or I’d be suffering from Blue Lung Disease from inhaling all those particles!
While I pondered colors I knitted a sample in a lace pattern I’d been wanting to try, bound off, gave it a cursory wash, then threw it in the dye pot with about a 1/4 t. of turquoise stock solution and glug of vinegar. About 45 minutes later
it was cooling in an exhausted dyebath. Not really the way you are supposed to do it, but it’s just a sample, right? Once it was pinned out and all dry
it was a teal color — lovely, but not what I had in mind for the shawl. I wound off more small skeins and overdyed them with different colors.
From left: Sky Blue, Red, and Purple.
The purple is a lovely dark shade. The red is very interesting. There are blue undertones and a dark red halo. I’ll do something with this that involves grapes, I think, as it reminds me of the bloom that is on the outside of dark unwashed grapes. And the blue on the left is just what I wanted! In the jar, the Sky Blue stock solution looked like it might be too close in color to the yarn, but somehow it intensified only the blue and not the grey. I just love it.
I washed the large skein, made more stock solution, simmered, and let it rest.
My husband peered into the pot on top of the stove and asked, “Blue spaghetti again?” Yup.
In other news, Sandy managed to figure out what the Mystery Object is, although both Bonnie and Syne had good ideas. It’s a fake pregnancy — my daughter is playing the very pregnant charcter Edna Louise in her school’s production of Come Back to Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Lisa may have Grossman’s Gams, but I have Bear’s Belly.
Cally at t’katch — the Language of Weaving tagged me for the Nice Award, which just thrills me no end! Thank you, Cally. Not only do you have a marvelous site, but you’ve spurred me to learn how to put in image in my sidebar.
With the award comes great responsibility: “This award is for those bloggers who are nice people; good blog friends and those who inspire good feelings and inspiration. Also for those who are a positive influence on our blogging world. Once you’ve been awarded, please pass it on to 7 others who you feel are deserving of this award.”
I’m taking it on myself to decide that I can’t award it to anyone who I know has already gotten it, so that takes Bonnie and Syne out of the list of possibles. So, I tag:
Lisa, at The Tsarina Tsays. Lisa is sort of the godmother of my blog, since a mutual online acquantance mentioned she had started one, I started reading it, then clicked on her WordPress button and found out that I could do it too. Since then, we’ve posted lots of comments on each others blogs, had a busy non-blog correspondance, and even gone yarn shopping together in New York. Lisa is an inspiration to knitters everywhere, and a sock designer that, well, blows my socks off! And, she was kind enough to suggest that I ask her yarn supplier,
Jennifer at NYS Farm — updates if she could point me to sources for undyed yarn. Jennifer not only offered to sell to me from her supply, but has been incredibly generous with information about dyeing. Plus, she knows the finer points of chicken butchering (and a whole lot more) , and she wrote a brilliant set of rules regarding garage sales.
Cathy-Cate at Hither and Yarn has great flower photos, knits and posts about lovely projects, and even has free knitting patterns.
I really enjoy stopping in at Theresa’s Tales of a Keyboard Biologist. She has the sweetest baby, and anyone who manages to knit while nursing gets a gold star in my book.
Lene at DancesWithWool takes me to the far north of Finland and shares the beauty that surrounds her as well as her amazing knitting.
Allan at Panabasis finds marvelous images and posts them with inimitable commentary. It’s always a treat when there is something new up.
And last, but certainly not least (no one here is least) Stephanie, AKA The Yarn Harlot who wittily, passionately, and generously tells us all about Knitting, Life, and Everything Else.
Lotsa odds’n'ends.
First, The Whipstick Knitters delivered our donations to the Seaman’s Church Institute on Monday. I made three of the forty-four knitted items from us that will be given to merchant seamen and women in the month of December, along with 16,000 more from other folks around the country. Yay, knitters!
The latest Traveling Socks got finished
and look how much yarn was leftover! The pattern is Wendy’s Feather and Fan Sock, and it’s a nice, easy-to-work pattern. The yarn is Regia Crazy Color. They have since been washed, and are a wee bit big. I think I’ll scrub them down some in size , just the foot part– since they aren’t superwash, that should be doable. Washed, they aren’t as silly at the top.
I cast on for a scarf with the luscious Silk Maiden that I got in Victoria this summer. I am one of perhaps ten knitters in the country who had not made a drop-stitch scarf, so that’s what I did.
And look how much yarn was leftover! I may turn this scarf into something else someday, so I just worked those ends into the scarf without cutting them off. Do you think I should block it?
I picked the next-to-last batch of apples and made applesauce.
So simple – just simmer quartered, cored apples with a little water until soft, then puree in the food processer. I ladled it into freezer bags and they’re now frozen stiff, awaiting mid-winter applesauce cravings.
I started making a costume item for the play my daughter’s in –here’s the preliminary pinning.
Any ideas what it’ll be? Comment lines are now open . . .
It’s not often that you can use the phrases “heart-breaking pathos”, “wicked humor”, and “knitting patterns” in the same book review, but Laurie Perry’s book Drunk, Divorced & Covered in Cat Hair: The True Life Misadventures of a 30-Something Who Learned to Knit After He Split is all those things, and more. A spin-off from her wildly popular blog, Crazy Aunt Purl, the book takes you through the couple of years in which her dumb-as-lint husband dumped her, she spent far too much time listening to George Jones CDs and drinking wine from a cracked coffee cup, a friend took her to a knitting lesson . . . and gradually life became good again. Part self-help book, part soul-baring confession, part ode to the joy of friends, part guide to the perils of re-entering the dating world, this book is ultimately about being true to yourself.
As a bonus, there are patterns for various knitted items that will get you through much of life’s little needs: among others, a hat, some scarves, a couple of purses, and a cat tunnel. Who doesn’t need a cat tunnel?
Laurie is on a book tour now, and the full tour details are here. She’ll be in Seattle tomorrow, and I have to miss it, dang it!
Full disclosure: Laurie happens to have Jen the Wonder Publicist in common with my husband, and I got a free advance reading copy of the book.
I spotted another discussion about natural dyes. A letter in the October 13th issue of The Economist takes them to task (politely) for referring to a “saffron revolution” in Burma, when in fact the brave monks of that country dye their robes with bark, ficus, and jackfruit, to get that rich reddish brown. It’s the Thai monks that use saffron, obtaining a golden yellow. But as the astute letter-writer, Sophia Carroll, puts it, “though I suppose the “jackfruit revolution” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.”
Since the comments on the ivy-dyed yarn got spread over two posts, I’ll address them all here:
Lisa made an outrageously clever pun– Brava!
Sandy contemplated awful things to do to ivy — yes, indeedy.
Cathy-Cate suggested that pureeing the ivy would bring satisfaction in many ways. A good idea, and one I contemplated, but I don’t have a dye-dedicated food processer and I’m a bit leery of using the food-dedicated food processor on leaves that I don’t consider edible. Not that there is toxic spray on them or anything, but still, it’s ivy!
Jennifer asked about mordants, seasons for gathering said ivy, and another possible use for it. The mordant the book specified was equal parts of alum and cream of tartar. The yarn was simmered in this, then rinsed and put in the dye bath. The dye bath was never what you might call dark, so I think all the color that there was went into the yarn. The book didn’t say a thing about time of year — any suggestions? I was talking with my friend Heather and she mentioned that she learned the hard way that bronze fennel only gives good color if it’s gathered after the first hard frost. As for feeding ivy to lambs, wouldn’t that make the milk and/or meat taste dreadful?
I found a lovely little dye guide at Half Price Books, The Fabric & Yarn Dyer’s Handbookby Tracy Kendall, which has all sorts of recipes for dyes and printing and general fun with fiber. One of them was a recipe for dyeing with ivy, which caught my eye, there being nothing good about the English ivy that clogs part of my garden. The thought of boiling it up to get something useful was irresistible, so I set to work, using the last skein of Knit Picks Bare that was kicking around.
Take 7 ounces of chopped ivy leaves . . .
Chopping ivy leaves is harder than you might think. It’s a tough leaf that fights back.
Pour 2 cups of hot water over chopped leaves and let sit for an hour.
Strain off liquid and add to pot with yarn and enough cold water to cover. Bring to boil and simmer for one hour.
The color in the book was a lovely greenish brown. My yarn came out sort of a pale butter yellow. Maybe not even butter, but margarine. Looking around the garden, I saw the perfect match:
Somehow I don’t think Decaying Hosta is a catchy colorway. This puppy’s getting overdyed.
The good news is that the box of yarn Jennifer sent me is not lost. Hurray! The bad news is that it’s back at Jennifer’s because I hadn’t changed my Zip code on my Paypal account with sufficient thoroughness after the post office gave me a new one. Oh. So the post office got tired of taking mis-zipcoded packages from this stack and putting them in that stack and sent it back to her – with postage due, adding insult to injury.
At any rate, it’s on it’s way again, correctly addressed, and will be here directly. And Marie at the yarn shop is very understanding about shipping issues, so that’s all right. This waiting thing — I’m getting very good at it.
So there we were watching the quirky new comedy Pushing Daisies when the beefy black detective character, Emerson Cod, is sitting at his desk and pulls out his knitting! And his desk accessories seem to include a knitted upright file holder and something else . . . maybe a knitted pencil cup. And the knitting needle he keeps in his suit pocket (Spoiler Alert) saves him and the main characters from certain death. And at the end, he puts the reward money in a knitted sock-like thing (no heel) and tucks it into drawer full of similar objects. How cool is that?!?!?!
This show is cute, bright, funny, and probably won’t be around too long, so catch it while you can. It’s sort of a cross between Amelie, the Lemony Snicket books, the story of Lazarus, and Philip Marlowe. With knitting.
Quick updates only, due to Extreme Busyness:
A nice article in today’s Seattle Times about the Nordic Knitting Conference at the Nordic Heritage Museum this weekend. No, I’m not going, even though I’m a member of the museum and probably got a notice that would have allowed me to make a priority reservation. I will try to get down there to get the booklet of patterns, though.
The cat wants out.
The yarn isn’t here yet, but I won’t get frantic about lost shipments until Saturday.
I’m staffing the fundraising donut sale table at my daughter’s high school tomorrow, and it will be outside the cafeteria building, in an area they playfully call “The Breezeway.” I’m guessing this means it might be breezy. I know it’s going to be chilly and damp, and I’m pulling on my alpaca mitts and wrapping my neck in the matching scarf. (Why can’t I find the blog entry about the mitts? It’s a mystery.) (Update: here it is.)
My father-in-law is visiting, and we’ll be busy doing family things, so it’s not like I’d have time to dye sock yarn anyway.
The traveling socks are almost done.
The cats wants in.
