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!!

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....

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?

Ruby Spice

Ruby spice

I've been doing a little more playing with dyes - more monochromatics and tones of colours this time. Sometimes, I want to mix up brand new colours specifically for a project in mind and this strong red with a hint of burnt orange was where my head was at. Unfortunately my washed fleece didn't seem to take the dye the same as the sock yarn at all. What should have been more of a flame red like the yarn below, turned into more of a ruby/deep red umber. But a happy surprise, I like it a lot. It did felt a bit more during this process so it'll be 'interesting' trying to card that lot out;-) I'll have to be more careful next time!

Flame red

The sock yarn came out spot on for colour though. I wanted to try and get some intense solids for smaller projects like cabled gloves or detailed lace scarves that would be killed using a strong variegated yarn - like tootiefruitie:-) I'll have to knit it up to see if I've been totally successful but it looks a smooth, strong, vibrant colour which is just what I was looking for.

Cinnamon spice

Cinnamon spice is an experiment in subtle variegations, tonally very close but just enough variance to give a subtle sock. Well, that's the theory! Again it'll have to be knitted up to see the effect but I think it will be a subtle enough colour to use a detailed lace sock pattern. After the green and orange stripey yarns fighting the lace, I'm hoping this will have a better balance.

So, that's as far as I've got dyeing this week as I ran out of re-sealable freezer bags for the microwave! But I got some more last night as well as a couple of casserole dishes - £1 each in Asda! - that hold 2 litres and small enough to fit in my teeny microwave. The theory is they will be better to use than the freezer bags, washable and I won't have to throw away so much plastic every time I dye. I'll tell you how I get on.....:-)

Dyeing stripey sock yarn

No blogging over the last few days has been a sure sign I've been busy doing something. Now I have got to the end of this process, I can get some decent pictures to show you just what I've been doing. Dyeing stripey sock yarn!! You'll be very proud of me, I remembered to document each stage as I went. This means though, my post will probably be rather long:-)

You may see a slight resemblance in my yarn to some Schoppel-Wolle I bought this week:-) I wanted to know how it was dyed so I analysed the yarn, measured out the stripe sections and started planning my own stripe variations. Then I started winding the yarn into sections for each colour stripe - 9 in all, with the colour reversing at 1 and 9. See, I've been working hard!

So the yarn is wound, the next step is to soak the yarn to make sure it is degreased (becoming a familiar step to me after all that fleece...). While that is soaking with some synthrapol or some soap powder - to degrease - and the acetic acid (better than white vinegar, no smell) - to prepare the fibres for the dye - I started mixing the colours I wanted. (For wool you use Acid dyes which require heat as the method of fixing. They also need the acetic acid to make the fibres accept the dye when being fixed with heat.)

There we go. Nine stripes, nine colours. 5 graded greens and 4 graded red/oranges to contrast. I painted them out to check the tones but paper was too absorbent and left the colours dull so I taped a small pieces of yarn to some card and tested the colours there. Much better. Now all that is left is to decide the order of the colours.

I wanted to make a self-striping yarn that meant I didn't have to change the yarn and get a lumpy seam but also to ensure the stripes would always have a nice contrast. So instead of a subtle gradation, I went for alternated colour grading - dark-green, yellow, green, orange, mid-green, vermillion, lime, red, light-lime, red, lime, vermillion etc.... And because of the way I wound the skeins, this should keep repeating between the dark to light greens and back again till the end of the skein. Cool, huh?

So dye ready, check. Yarn soaked long enough, check. Okay time to paint the skeins. There are lots of ways to do this - Kettle dyeing in a pot on the cooker, a slow cooker, painting by hand, dip dyeing etc. but today I want to control the colour process so I am painting by hand. To fix the colour I will steam the yarn which will be wrapped safely in clingfilm inside a re-sealable freezer bag. I have steamed yarn on the cooker and using a microwave and both work well, but since the micro is quicker and causes less condensation in my kitchen, I will be using this method for now:-)

Warning - don't totally seal the freezer bag as it will explode in the microwave :-))))) Leave about an inch gap for the steam to escape!

And there you are. Skeins ready to hang out to dry. Once they are dry, you can wind them into a ball or skein ready to knit, weave or crochet with, whatever you fancy.

Warning! - the bag will be very hot!!!! It needs to cool down first before you try to open it. If you have no patience like me, run cold water over the outside and gently prise the cling film apart under the cold tap. Wear marigold gloves to protect your hands and keep your face at a distance! The hot steam will scald if you are too close.

Okay, now you are ready to wash your yarn. There should be very little dye left in the yarn so not much washing is needed. Wash with some gentle hand wash soap powder and wash till the water runs clear. Then gently squeeze out all the excess water and spin in the washing machine. Just spin! No water to agitate the yarn at this stage, we don't want felted yarn at the last hurdle.

I found my clever winding of the stripey skein back and forwards a bit of a nightmare to unwind. I will have to work out a better method to save me time and agro! But it's all done and I've wound it like the schoppel-wolle balls to compare the two. What do you think? Pretty close?

While I had some dye left, I also painted up a few stripey solids in the orange and green. I do think winding in balls shows off the yarn well.

Well, the proof will be in the knitting and I have been knitting away today to see how these yarns knit up. I'm finding it hard to match the yarn to patterns at the moment as they are just a bit too busy for more complex designs. Some pics for you tomorrow on my progress.....

All skeins painted in order and wrapped in clingfilm. Ready for microwave blasting. I usually blast on full for 30 seconds and leave for about 30 seconds before starting again. In theory your yarn shouldn't need more than 3-5 mins but I usually find as I use more dye that I probably need that it takes a bit longer for all my excess dye to evaporate. I usually know it is ready when the clingfilm is shrinking and all stuck together:-) and most of the dye has gone from inside the bag. If you are unsure, blast it for another minute or so. I find it better to be safe than sorry. I would rather take more time now than see all my dye run down the sink because I didn't fix it enough!!!

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ETA: I've found this method of winding the yarn into sections for big stripes a very complex one - and prone to getting tangled when you try to unwind it. I found the best answer is to make super long skeins and measure the length I want to paint each colour as I go. 12metres/40ft should do the trick for an average 3 or 4 colour stripe yarn. Haven't tried to duplicate the tropicana stripey using this method yet but if 12 metres isn't enough, I can just make it bigger:) Please note, thats 12 metres/40ft in the round, so if you are winding it around furniture:) then that's 6metres/20ft one way and 6mtres/20ft the other = 12mtres/40ft total. Any questions, just give me a shout!

Tropical fruits

Not much knitting has been happening this weekend but I did manage to get some dyeing done. I had two hanks of quite an acid yellow from a previous dyeing session - waaaaay back - and I thought hand painting might just salvage them. I also wanted to try to fix them using the microwave instead of steaming them, just to compare the difference. (it would also save my kitchen from a lot of moisture running down the walls :-)

So these first two hanks had the bright lemon yellow base and I played with aquas and jades and a touch of deeper blue on top for the green skein and yummy oranges and marigold yellows, with a hint of darker red for the second skein. These hanks were wound a long time ago and there is only 64 gms on each. No idea why it's not 50gm or 100gm but there you go. I'm sure I can use it for something nice anyway.

The raspberry pink skein was an overly thick hank wound on the lazy kate of my spinning wheel - a very short length indeed. It had been partially dip dyed in light pink and I re-wound it on my niddy noddy into a larger 1.5 mtr skein and hand painted different pinks and reds on top of it. I love these colours and although there is only 74gms of it, I'm loving it anyway.

This last little skein was a baby hank that I thought would be good as a tester. There's only 32gms but it will be interesting to see how the dye bands knit up. I was experimenting with paler colours but I found these a bit wishy washy for me. Very aquatic but not really zingy enough.

The fixing using the microwave did work after a few experiments and is a lot quicker. But I think I'll need to experiment further before I will feel comfortable with the permanancy of the colour.

If you are interested, there are lots of really good books on dyeing your own yarn - Dyeing to knit, Yarns to dye for, and the yarn lovers guide to dyeing to name just a few. These are links to Amazon uk and you can read up their reviews as well. It is really worthwhile having a book as a guide or reference as there are so many little things that can go wrong or time saving tips to help you get successful yarns very quickly. My favourite for the kettle dyeing and microwaving techniques is 'Yarns to dye for' although I do have all three and dip into them for different reasons.

Now, I'll just have to think of what to knit with my tropical fruits!