Graduating colours

Creative day 7!

Today, I decided to play with colour again but using dyes. There are several different ideas I've been meaning to try out but hadn't got around to so with such a lovely sunny day, I thought it would be perfect drying weather :)

One thing I hadn't got around to much when I was dyeing sock yarns was graduating colour - the ones where the whole ball goes from light to dark in long runs of colour. These yarns work especially well for longer lace shawl patterns and parasols without colour repeats too. I've seen several methods of doing this so I thought I'd try them out.
 

First of all though, I had a play with mixing colours on the skein. These colour bands are quite close together so will knit up more of a zigzag yarn with short runs of colours. What I love about experimental yarns is that the quick changes and blends give you ideas for other yarns - like using a viewfinder to focus on new compositions. I like the soft ochres, aquas and purple/blues down at the bottom right of the skein especially.

And the burnt ochres and greens in this one. The pinks didn't photograph well I'm afraid whatever light I tried. It was just too bright - I shouldn't complain!! But there were more burnt reds with hints of lavendar fushia pink.

In the other mini samples, I was experimenting more with technique. They all look similar as an end result but each one used a different method of graduating the colour. I learned a lot today, so I can make lots more progress tomorrow on the back of today's experiments.

mini spriral of graduating colour

One of the graduating yarns experiments. Once I unravel this fully, it will be interesting to see how the colours look and knit up. Imagine this as a whole 100gm ball of yarn. Rather subtle colour scheme for me isn't it? :) Don't worry I managed to squeeze in a dayglow rainbow one too just for contrast!

So part way done with these. The technique has been tested, now the results need to be knitted up to see if they look good. They're only short lengths so that shouldn't take long. That's my weekend sorted I think.

Have a good weekend and see you all soon!

Knitting testers

I've just finished knitting up the little yarn testers to show you.  Did you think this was how they would knit up? For some reason, I thought there would be more room between the stripes so I'll show you bigger bands next tester session:-) I always think it's amazing how so highly contrasting colours like the purple with the coral and orange can knit into something much more subtle - contrasting stripes but overall they blend well.

The one pinky/orange semi-solid I knitted using the cornflower cable pattern from Karen's cowl pattern I've been knitting. I'm due to test knit this pattern as socks so I thought I could have a tester here first. Now I just want to carry on and make me some bright pink cabley socks - yum!! So now I'll have to get some more yummy yarn dyed for me to use.

I also promised to show you the two skeins of silk I dyed as well. These were dyed with the same tones as the supersock yarns but they have come out a lot paler with more subtle colour variations. Despite that, I do like them but I think I'll need to practice with the silk base a bit more to get a feel for the yarn as well as getting the colours I intended:-)

You may have noticed a few blogless days here this week but I'm glad to say it's all been towards a very good cause - electrics in the shed:-)))) How happy has this made me? Happy, happy dance!! We have spent the last two days working on this and I now have power and lights - well, one light but another two to come soon as we ran out of natural light to get the job finished today. And we were so lucky to get two dry days in a row too. But we are all soooo tired!! Running a cable the full length of the garden wall and having to remove years worth of clinging ivy is NOT a fun job. But, it's all worth it, it really is:-) Now I can get the inside of the shed properly dry again after the flood and seal the floor and the walls. So not quite finished but a huge step in the right direction!!

I'll also be able to set up my hot plates and get some kettle dyeing done too! Oh, it's all exciting:-)

I've also finished a few projects - gasp! - and I've started some more spinning too so I'll tell you  all about it this week. Just need some decent light for pictures!!

Coral pinwheel flowers:-)

I've been up in my shed doing a little dyeing of testers and these cute little mini-skeins are the result from yesterday. Yesterday was a coral pink day. Since I've been asked for a skein of coral yarn, I thought I'd investigate and play with this colour - who knew coral pink could have so many tones? I love pink but I tend towards the magenta/purple pinks myself so this was an exploration into pastures new:-) If you type coral pink into google images, you get the full gamut of orangey pinks to pinkier coral tones, from pales to deep rich colourations.

So if you asked me to dye you a coral pink yarn, which tone would you mean?! My first impressions of what colour to dye just widened dramatically!! The world of colour seems to grow the more I really study it - it's fascinating and I'm glad I've moved out of my colour comfort zone to explore a new palette of colour.

I'm loving this rose - look at the tones of pinks and orangey pinks, just lovely. I'm wanting some of these for my garden now - although I didn't think I was a rose girl personally. But then since I've had a garden of my own, I've discovered I tend towards big and blowsy flowers like Dalias and Peonies:-) So this one is very much in keeping - and it's very bright and in your face!!

My first attempt at coral went a lot orangier than I wanted so I overdyed with a pinkier tone to get this deep orangy coral. It matches the heart of the rose perfectly! And it definitely comes under the coral colour umbrella;-) But is it the right tone of coral for my request?

I also dyed a test skein of 100% silk worsted weight using the same dye colour which came out a lovely soft crab pink/coral - you can see it at the bottom of the pinwheel garden pic at the top! But the light failed today as I was photographing so it would be best if I waited to do the yarn justice - it's just so gorgeous and soft with a lovely sheen - yum! Hopefully I can capture it in better light tomorrow.

I used the mini-samples to explore the differing tones of coral, from orange tints to more pinkier tones in a cross range of semi-solids, subtle and strong variegateds. So, now I'm going to knit them up and see how they turn out and maybe they will make it into my shop as a new colourway - we'll have to wait and see.

Yarns for sale!!

Well, I didn't mean to be away so long! Between dyeing and knitting my cowl I've been a busy bee:-) But I've got some new yarns finished, lots more bright semi-solids planned, some designing going on and a finished knitted cowl to show you this week, so its all been happening lately!

But I've also got to the point where I'm running out of blank yarn stock so I'm going to have to use what I have left to sell so I can afford to buy more - and keep dyeing! So, from now on - including today - all yarns I post will be for sale. Each skein will be $28 and I will try and work out a paypal button to make life easier. ETA: yarns now available in my new Etsy shop - Ultraviolet Yarns

Please note there is only one skein of each colourway of today's yarns so it will be on a first come first served basis. 
ETA: All sold now-sorry!

But I'm happy to dye anything in the yarn gallery in as many skeins as you need - just contact me to let me know what you fancy.

'Sweetgrass'

First up, a lovely subtly variegated grassy green I've called 'sweetgrass'. This is a bit yellower than the emerald I knitted my Veyla mitts with but I really like it. I'm thinking nice subtle tonal stripes for socks or autumn mitts would work well.

'Rich Plums'

And my favourite of this bunch, the rich plums mix - definitely my kind of colour palette this one.  It's a more subtle blend of harmonious plummy tones giving quite a soft feel overall. This would go with most of my autumn/winter wardrobe!

'Cranberry and Plums'

And then, using the same colours as the plums, I painted this skein with definite bands of colour rather than blending the tones. Quite a contrast - much clearer and more definite colour sections. It will be interesting to see how this knits up in contrast to the other one.

I've also added a yarn gallery on Flickr which has all the colour schemes I've dyed so far to the sidebar on the right - near the top - due to a request to see them all together. I'll keep adding all my new yarns here so you can find them easier than trailing through blog posts:-)

Oh, its all exciting! I've actually taken that first step!! Wish me luck!

All the reds

This weekend, we have some dyeing going on! Using those reds I was playing about with over the last week or so, we have a scarf blank called 'All the reds' especially commissioned for EJ. I would like to thank EJ for being so understanding this month with me being unwell which has delayed her receiving her especially commissioned yarn. But at long last, it is dyed, rewound into a skein and ready to go.

I really love these colours -very intense but still with the feel of Autumn. This blank is painted from light to dark in the middle back to light again at the other end. Very similar visually to the calm horizons in the giveaway last month.

I dyed a couple more skeins, one semi solid and one variegated, in cranberries, plums and purples but they are still drying so photos soon - well, depending whether it stops raining and I get some decent light!

On a shed note, the water has mostly dried out and doesn't seem to be flooding again even after a full day of rain. I think it must have been a flash flood after a month of dry weather hardening the ground so the water ran off the hill instead of soaking in. But, just to be on the safe side, the shed is getting a waterproofing inside. Haven't quite figured out quite how yet or just how expensive that will be but I think it is definitely necessary to stop everything getting ruined once I move in all my work stuff if it happens again.

Got a bit of startitis for a few new projects too so more this week as they progress.... Happy knitting!

The story of the plummy red yarn.....

I've been playing around with the red dyes a bit more this week and spent a bit of time trying to get subtle tones of mid to dark red. They don't look the same on paper as they do on the yarn but if you give them a coat of PVA glue they come up a treat! The brush can drag the dye as well though so a spray varnish would probably be a better idea next time.

I've been keeping colour notes as I go along to go in my dyeing notebook - see, getting organised:-) And having fun playing with tones on a colourwheel too. There are so many online charts you can work with - this tonal version is from Itten's book on colour. Simple and clear tones, easy to read and use. I like this one for its clarity.

And this much more complex version if you really want very subtle gradations of colour. Its a shame my printer has run out of ink as this one is pretty comprehensive to work with. I need to laminate a copy and stick it on my workshop wall - when the shed is ready, that is.

So after my foray into colour, I narrowed my colours down to three tones of reds and three tones of plum purples. Then played with colourwashes:-) The red wash was a lot more subtle before I killed it with glue - sigh! I also had an idea to stop the colour varying on paper and yarn by using thin mini test blanks. You would have had some lovely pictures as they painted up beautifully. It's just a shame I set fire to them in the microwave -BIG sigh!

So, how did I manage that, you ask? Um, well, I chopped up a long knitted length and stapled card on the ends to stop the yarn unravelling before dyeing. What's wrong with that, you ask? Didn't dawn on me that the staples are of course metal until I saw the flames:-) Luckily the microwave still works - god knows how! - if a bit smelly for the next few uses but its all fine now. It took longer getting the burnt smell out the house. Luckily I still have the blowers that are drying the floor in the living room - still! don't get me started on that subject:-) I'm ignoring the fact that the water leak has taken over a month to dry out so far... But the blowers came in handy to shift the burnt smell! (NB - I only use this microwave for dyeing! I never use it for food, so don't worry:-)

But it was worth it as I got a lovely plummy red skein of variegated yarn ready to go. No idea what I want to make from it, I'm just living with it for a while till the right project comes up....

Red door!

I couldn't wait till tomorrow to show you the red door:-) Flame red!! I've only painted one coat so far and will give it another coat tomorrow. I was going to paint the door surround red too but I think it may be better fading into the background a little. That means I'll have to get some more white gloss but I'll need it anyway to paint the windows and door on the inside.

Sigh! isn't it striking?! A little bit oranger than I thought but the reflective light is very bright and the paint is still wet. All I need now are some red planters attached to the windowsills;-)) Okay, maybe overkill! I do need to sort out the last bit of the outside though - the fascia. Problem is no-one delivers it and it's way to long to fit in a normal car. Still working on that one.....

It is a little bit darker red in real life, but not much! After painting, I turned round and saw my lovely bright red Dalias. The sun keeps bleaching out the depth of their colour as there are very subtle tonal variations going on.

I've been trying to capture those red tones today in my dyeing experimentation. With red being a primary colour, you can't mix it and have to use the bought tub of dye. Only problem is, that this red seems more vermillion and has an obviously orangey base. Adding magenta to take away the orange cast moves it very quickly into cranberry/plum tones. I'm wanting to run the strong red into deep crimsons but the red base just isn't going there. I know I have all the colours in the range of acid dyes but I really need a crimson red base.

Maybe its because I've painted the door:-) but these just don't seem very 'red' to me. We have orangey-reds, blue-reds, plum-reds, purpley-reds, browney-reds but not crimson red. Oh, they are all lovely in their own right and I'll probably use a lot of these soon but it's not what I'm looking for right now. I'll try again tomorrow or else look for another supplier of acid dyes........

Commission your own yarn

Today being the final prize in my giveaway month, I have something a little different for you. Yes, it's a blank skein of sock yarn, just waiting for the winner to tell me what colours they'd love to have this dyed in, and how they would like it dyed - sock blank, scarf blank, variegated, big or small stripes etc.

Over the past month we've had strong variegated yarns like tootiefruitie and deep fuschia, stripes like the emerald green and the firestarter socks as well as semi solids and more subtle variegations like lavendar blue. You may have a specific colourway in mind or maybe you would like one similar to those that have been up for offer this month.

This skein is the end of a cone so there is a little extra yarn - about 116gms in total -which is perfect for that extra little bit you wish you had when you are getting to the end of a big shawl or scarf :-) I wish I'd had that last night - I got to the edging of my nightingale shawl and read on ravelry that this section needs about 24gms. Weighed my yarn left - 24gms. It's going to be verrrry tight!

So, if you have a small project in mind from all our wonderful pattern suggestions this week, maybe you can win your own commissioned hand dyed yarn to knit it with. I look forward to hearing your suggestions!

ETA: competition closed.

Calm horizons

Running with my landscape theme I wanted to try out a less busy pattern and have strong areas of pure colour blending in to one another. I removed the purples and concentrated solely on a monochromatic colour palette running from dark to lights. I didn't go too light though to keep the contrast from being too extreme when knitted up. So this runs from darks to mid tones of blues.

This is the blank painted, it's slightly darker than the final colours as its still wet but you can get a very good visual idea how this will knit up. If you want a long rectangular scarf, it will run from light to dark to light blue again - light blue tips and dark around the neck. If you want a narrower scarf than the width of this blank - 5ocms - then you will just get slightly longer sections of colour before it moves on to the next tone. There is something so calming about simple gradations of colour - simple, no busyness, just calm and floaty. It looks like deep blue layers in the sky as the sun is going down, before any red creeps in there.

I have seen some lovely shawls knitted up with simple colour gradations and they look just like butterfly wings - gorgeous. What a lovely way to add character and colour without killing the pattern. Or maybe a small stripey bag like this one? You can imagine the colours drifting into each other easily for this pattern - although I think fingering weight may be a little light for a tote bag:-) But it would look great!

So thinking larger bands of colour, what do you think this yarn would knit up best as?

Look forward to hearing all your suggestions and see you tomorrow for our final giveaway.

After the storm

Today we have had the most torrential rain with blustery winds, blowing at us horizontally in sheet after sheet of never ending rain. The sky was so dark at lunchtime that it looked like dusk. Sadly this heralds the end of summer and the change of seasons, but after the storm, everything smells fresh and alive and vibrant. Yes, the flowers are dying and the blooms are falling off one by one but there is something about the coming of Autumn that makes me feel alive. I always enjoy Autumn, even the wind and rain:-) as the weather seems in its right place - please, mother nature - NOT so much of it in summertime, please!! And I like being able to pull out the warmer jumpers and knee socks with big boots, wrapped up ready for whatever the weather decides to throw at us. The colours we wear suddenly move away from lighter tones of lilac, pale blues and greens to deeper shades as if we are mentally and visually preparing for the change of season and packing away our summer colours and clothes.

As I was considering what colours to dye today, I think that subconscious part of me was talking very loudly! I have started to move into deeper tones, rich and comforting palettes that want now to be explored. The weather today suggested this new yarn - After the storm. Okay, the landscape out my window wasn't quite so intensely coloured but the idea of bands of colours from sunsets and landscapes reminded me a lot of the work of Mark Rothko's colour field studies and it also reminded me that I'd been thinking of using yarn blanks as a canvas.

So I started to play around mixing dyes and experimenting with some colour palettes using fields of colour. The knitted blanks I am trying out today are slightly different from the sock blanks - I think I'll call them scarf blanks:-). Using only one thread, I knitted up an 100gm blank twice as wide as the socks, so I could literally 'see' how a scarf would look over the full length. If I paint from dark to light, the scarf will knit up exactly the same. I find this much easier to visualise than painting a very long skein. Each blank will be unique and I can have no colour repeats at all - a one-off painting.

So, today I painted my landscape of the stormy sky based on my little colourwash. I randomly changed the tonal values as I went. I find this method really lets you get much subtler detail in the colours and you can blend as you go. I wanted to let you see this as a blank first so you can imagine just how this will knit up if you are planning a long rectangular scarf. If you are thinking socks, then this will give you a similar stripe pattern to my aquaviolet cable socks that I'm knitting from my purply/blue/green sock blank.

So, what do you think this one-off scarf skein would look nice knitted up as?

Horizontal stripes sock blank

Been trying out some more dyeing using the sock blanks. This time, I've painted some horizontal stripes rather than vertical ones to compare the difference. It's meant to give a more broken colour effect as each colour stripe is only about an inch/2.5cm wide. It would be cool if this knitted stripes going 'up' instead of around:-)

I tried to keep all the colours in the same family of warm tones with some plummy purple as a contrast. It dried a bit lighter than I expected but I still like the tones so its all good.

So what to make with this one? If this yarn is a bit more subtle than the other 'stripeys' then this should work well with a more complex sock pattern. Maybe some more cables or even a lace pattern? I still have my Cookie A book of lovely sock designs to work through so maybe I should take on a new technique and learn to knit socks from the top down:-) I know its not hard, I think I'm just used to short row heels and prefer the magic cast on to grafting the toes at the end. But that might have something to do with my bumpy intro to kitchener stitch:-) Even though I've got the hang of it now.

I do think the subtle colours would make a lovely lace shawl too. Maybe I'll knit a full 100gms sock blank with only one thread and dye shawl yarn with wider stripes and subtlties that way. I love variegated yarns but I really don't like how they can kill a delicate lace shawl pattern turning it into a fight between colour v's pattern with neither winning - or commonly known as a right dogs dinner:-) I can see more shawl yarn experiments on the horizon......

I thought I'd show you how the yarn rips back - crinkly! A good soak and dried under tension really does the trick but you do need quite a lot of weight for maximum de-crinkle. I used a hammer to weigh the ends of the two skeins down - hey, I was improvising ;-) and it worked a treat. I did check up about steaming and apparently you can steam the kinks out of the skein using a steam iron but don't let the iron touch the yarn. Haven't tried it yet as the other method works fine and I can go away and get some knitting done while its drying!

So, two de-crinkled skeins all ready to knit into matching socks. Now, just need to find a pattern.....

Knitting the sock blank

So my sock blank is dry and I have decided to unravel it into two matching balls before I start knitting. I made two large heaps of crinkly yarn and then wound them on the ball winder making sure I started with the same end:-) It would defeat the purpose if I got it wrong now! (although I have seen a deliberately opposite pair that worked very well too - just a thought for another time).

I know I could probably start knitting straight away but the yarn looks so crinkly. I read that it evens itself out once you block your sock but I think I prefer to wet it and stretch the kinks out first. I tensioned the skein when it was drying to get the yarn straight again. I think you can use steaming as well but I've never tried that.

So now I have two straightened balls of yarn ready to knit. Plain stocking stitch is a bit boring even with coloured stripes and I want to try something else than a rib pattern. So I'm going to incorporate the cabling that I used in firestarter - without the gusset detail. I know I've only knitted that style once but it makes the heel seem interminable! So I'm going to revert back to a short row heel for this one. I'll have to do a bit of manoeuvering with the cabling but I'm sure I'll find a solution:-)

So, the sock so far.... The cabling pattern is working well, good definition working with the colours and I like the way there is some of the subtle colour gradations within the greens and the purples as well as the blending into the next colour. The colours are making bigger bands than I expected but I can bear that in mind for the next one.

Next stop, the heel. Only a few more inches for me to think of a way to keep the cable pattern and have enough stitches to have a wide enough heel. Yes, I know! I really should have thought about that before I started but hey, I was being impulsive:-)