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:-)

Dyeing sock blanks

Everywhere I go recently I've been hearing about sock blanks. 'What's a sock blank?' I thought. Is this something I should or want to know about? After a little bit of research, I've found out it's a long knitted length of sock yarn, knitted with two strands at once. This 'blank' is then hand painted/dyed in whatever pattern or colours you like and once you have fixed the dye and left it to dry, you can knit up two identical socks when you unravel the blank - clever, huh?

The intention is you can knit both socks at once if you want using this method but I've not tried that technique as yet so I can either knit one sock and wind the second thread into a ball as I go, or I could unravel the whole lot and wind into balls ready for my two identical socks.

So, I've got the gist of sock blanks. First thing to do is knit myself a blank. Out comes the knitting machine. The looser the knit, the easier it will be for the dye to get into all the stitches and not leave any white bits, so I selected every alternate needle on the loosest gauge and knitted two 50gm balls of sock yarn together for as long as it lasted. I cast off with a chain stitch so it will unravel easily after dyeing. I guessed as to the right proportions of height and width here - I'm not sure how this compares to shop bought ones. I could change the width to get different effects too but for now I'll stick with this size and see how I get on.

Understanding the theory and applying that knowledge are two different matters:-) What type of pattern will give what effect? I found a really helpful link at Knitpicks that gives you an understanding of how stripes, dashes and zigzags will look knitted up. Exactly what I needed. So on to the dyeing....

I used some already mixed colours - greens, aquas, blues and purples - and started with a basic stripe pattern. I tried to make it repeat the colour order but it doesn't really need to as it's more like a canvas. Both socks are being painted at once so you could paint a landscape - that would be interesting! - and they will still knit up the same.

Each colour band was broken up a bit more with some tonal variation. You don't need to load a brush with dye, it goes through the knitted fabric easily so no turning over and smudging your work of art! And you can get some fine detail in there.

Then wrapping up in cling film, just like a painted skein and blasted in the microwave (or steamed if you prefer) until the colour is fixed. I gave this about 15 mins just to be sure as it was more of an unknown quantity. A little colour came out in the first rinse but not much more than that. So good result.

Dried, it looks a little paler in colour but has still retained some of the finer painted detail. If anything, the purple has receded and the greens now dominate. I think both the aqua and the purple dyes must have been a weaker solution. I also got a few little blobs from either some sediment or dye on the edge of the cling film. This hasn't happened before so I'll have to remember to wipe the excess dye off the edges before wrapping and mix fresh dyes each time from now on.

But all the same, I do like my little experiment. Now, the exciting bit - what will it look like knitted up? Tune in tomorrow:-)