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!

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?