Yarn Therapy

I'm glad I'm finally learning to work the serger, but it's still very foreign and hard to do--and I may never recover from the "blind hem episode"--so I felt like spending a day with yarn.  It's friendlier, never cuts or grabs anything, and never requires such a thing as a blind hem.  But I needed a break from the lace shawl, so
Some friends gave me a dye kit and this yarn back in March, but I've been a bit nervous to try it because I was afraid of messing up the yarn somehow, but since I still can't do any sewing I decided to give it a shot yesterday. 

Since the yarn is gift yarn, I wanted to make something for myself with it, and decided that I wanted a pair of yellow socks and a pair of red socks.  I started with the yellow, thinking it might be easiest to fix if I messed it up, but this was actually pretty simple. 
The instructions say to simmer on the stove for 30 minutes or until the water is clear, which for me took a bit longer, but it did indeed work!

And I love the color.  These will be very happy socks.

Emboldened by my success, I moved on to the red
which needed a bit of extra dye as I was mostly producing variegated yarn rather than a solid color.  I guess in the yarn world, I can call it "kettle dyed" and sell it at a premium, but I was sort of aiming for a mostly-solid color. 
which it actually isn't, but it's closer than it was.  The REALLY unfortunate part is that in order to get rid of the white spots, I had to remove the string holding the hand in place, so this is currently a great big red snarl, but at least it's a great big red snarl without any white spots.  That's something, I suppose.

By this time, I was REALLY having fun, so I dug out some yarn I have been saving for a shawl
and the bottle of teal dye that I bought with it. 

5 skeins are a bit harder to work with than 1,
 but I was trying to get them all in the same "dye lot" as it were, so I kept moving yarns back and forth between the pots.  I added a bit of extra dye and lots more time, and the results are definitely "kettle dyed" rather than a solid color, but
I'm still quite pleased with them. So pleased, in fact, that once I get my "to-do" list done today, there will be some yellow socks being started.........

Pi shawl?  What Pi shawl?????????

Comments

Janet said…
Way to go Toni, love the colors! Just remember, the pots are now dying pots, not cook pots. I think it is because you have used the acid dyes from knitpicks, it does something to the pots. Definitely you don't want to cook in them and have the dye in your foods, lol. They are gorgeous. Have fun with the yellow socks!
August 5, 2010 at 11:00 AM
RobinH said…
Beautiful! Colors that pretty will lift your spirits just to look at them!
August 5, 2010 at 11:13 AM
Meredith said…
What fun, I have thought about dying my own yarn but haven't. Can't wait to see how you like it when you are knitting with it.
Have a wonderful day,
Meredith
August 5, 2010 at 12:54 PM
Alice said…
The yarn looks great!!
August 6, 2010 at 8:19 AM
Daniele said…
Look at you dye girl! That is the best red I've seen in awhile! It's hard to get something close to red - it usually goes pinkish. I've heard the hotter the water the better the dye takes. Great job!

And I LOVE that yellow - can't wait to see those socks!!
August 6, 2010 at 10:07 AM
Janet said…
I just thought of something, you said that you had to take off your ties on the skeins to make sure you didn't have any white spots on your yarn. Would you possibly be able to retie but loosely to hold your skeins/hanks of yarn in basically one piece so that it won't ball up in a snarlly mess????
I think perhaps if you are careful enough, and loosly tie them you might be able to do this without a tangled up mess. Just a thought.
August 6, 2010 at 10:03 PM
toni in florida said…
Love all of the resulting colors, especially that teal. Great work, li'l miss productive!
August 7, 2010 at 6:06 AM
AlisonH said…
Nothing like playing with watercolors to brighten up a day!
August 9, 2010 at 10:49 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Used The Glue Gun Without Burning Myself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Image
I'm not sure I'll have a prouder accomplishment all year--or a more surprising one.  I think I have a few fingerprints left. Andy is gone for the weekend, so the kitties and I are having a crafting weekend.  With their help,  I finished the first project of the year. The colors are a bit more subdued in real life, but I don't know how to reduce the intensity of this cell phone's camera.  I also cut some more strips for other projects, and wound another Hank from Hell:  A couple years ago I bought some Feza Rio that was on clearance, and for a cashmere/merino blend, it's not at all soft, and until this yarn, I didn't know one could hank yarn badly, but there does seem to be a way to do it so unevenly that permanent kinks are put into the yarn, and if that weren't enough fun, rather than being normal human beings who tie the ends into the threads holding the hank in place, these deranged maniacs tied the two ends together and snipped off the end...
Read more

Whew, It's Been A While.

Image
Wow - more than a year.   I am still crafting - lots of chemo caps knitted this year, but I'm also still learning to quilt.  This, is one of a set of table runners after I made a huge mistake on what was going to be a quilt.  Whoops.  That's twice I've done that.  I'd show you the other set, but blogger isn't letting me upload any older pictures.  I can show you this, which is from a kit and is one of my new favorites. This quilt, is my first attempt with a striped fabric, and is going to be shipped off to it's recipient today, who hopefully doesn't suffer from dizziness or vertigo.  What I learned from THIS project is that stripes aren't always printed straight, and if they are, I certainly don't always cut or sew straight.  Ahem... I am back to working from home.  I had been the marketing director for a local air conditioning company, but it was a family business, and what I discovered during the slow months is that it was a nightmare....
Read more

Ostrich Plume Scarf

Image
This scarf is actually very simple, but I'm trying to make the directions as thorough as possible.  It has a moss-stitch border of 6 rows on top and bottom and 4 stitches on each side, and uses the stitch pattern KNOWN as Ostrich Plume (hence the name).  There's a 3-stitch decrease using a slip 2, k1, pass slipped stitches over, which creates a nicer look than the traditional slip 1, k2tog, pass slipped stitch over technique, but feel free to use the more traditional decrease if you choose.  I used a shorter bottom and top edging to allow the wavy stitch pattern to pull the border into the wave effect, but you could certainly add a few extra rows of moss-stitch to the top and bottom if you would like. I have written this to slip the first stitch of all but the very first row as I think it makes a nicer edge, but you may choose to simply knit them.  As a matter of personal preference, I never slip the first stitch of the first row--it doesn't work with some cast-o...
Read more