A (Sort-of) Pair of Socks

Hello!  Well, here is the first pair of socks that I have completed using my own hand-dyed yarn.  You may recall that this was the yarn that took the dye weird.  The socks don't "match" but they came out pretty well.  This yarn is sport weight which knits-up so fast!  I made them toe-up so that I could use every inch of the yarn.  They are just a shade too small for me, so I will be on the watch for an orange-loving sock-wearer who has small feet!

I am off to drive the car pool.  Have a great day!

Knitting and Dyeing

Still here, though I haven't been blogging much.  It's raining everyday here, so I've been knitting and dyeing when it's raining, then walking and mowing when it's not.  (Among all the other May craziness).

I finished the Monkey socks that I had been knitting out of Crock O Dye wool by Knit One Crochet Too.  I am giving them to Susie for her birthday.  She loves brown.  

Happy Sunday!

Happy Sunday! 

Cascade Sassy Stripe, Better Blue Stripe

My dear friend bought me this striped sock yarn when she was on vacation, then apologized for its being so ugly.  :-)  It was very drab.

I over-dyed the whole thing in Pro Chemical and Dye Turquoise and now I love it!

Wood Elf

Hello, everyone!  We are experiencing weeks of thunderstorms and humidity here.  Nice weather for knitting, but that's about it!  I have been knitting a sock with some of my newly hand-dyed yarn (the one I called Pumpkin Patch).

Here's another batch of dyeing goodness:

Yellow Froehlich over-dyed with greens and browns.  I call it Wood Elf.

This yarn was inspired by two of the yarns in a book called The Yarn Lover's Guide to Hand Dyeing.

On page 78 is a yellow yarn that she over-dyed which caused me to say, "Hey, I have crazy-bright yellow sock yarn that I can dye!"  On page 144 is a sock yarn with a regular pattern of stripes and variegated sections.  So I did something like that, hoping that when it's knit-up it will be lovely!

May is Crazy!

Here's the latest product of my dye-mania:

Froehlich Sedrun over-dyed Turquoise

You can't tell from this picture but it has quite a nice bit of variation of tone.  If you click on it, you can see it better.  The late afternoon sun is not as nice for photographing yarn as the morning sun.

We are really enjoying the warm, sunny weather.  Hope you are having the same!  May is so packed with activities and events, it's almost as crazy as December!

A Tangled Morning

Hello!  Well, I dyed some more wool!  This first one is Wildfoote yarn that I over-dyed with the Winter Sample kit from Pro-Chemical and Dye.
Again, I wrapped the yarn around my 9ft dining room table and sectioned it off in  six-3ft sections.  Then I dyed each section with about 1/8th of a tsp of dye.

Wildfoote Sock Yarn dyed with Winter Sample Kit

This second one is Froehlich Blauband Sock Yarn dyed with the Desert Sample kit, same technique as above.  When it was all done and dry, I had a heck of a tangled mess for some reason and spent this morning with it spread out around chairs winding it up.  It was very traumatizing and I am hoping that I forget all about it before I knit with it.  I don't want to harbor ill will towards it because it is beautiful, but I was in tears.  (I know, I'm a big baby).  My sixteen-year old son kept telling me it wasn't worth it and that I should throw it away.  But I conquered!!!

Froehlich Special Blauband over-dyed with the Desert Sample pack from Pro-Chemical and Dye

Thanks for checking in!

Dyeing Sock Yarn

Hello, everyone!  

I have been having loads of fun lately dyeing wool.  I bought a sample kit of acid dyes from Pro Chemical and Dye.  The Autumn sampler has 6 colors, costs about ten dollars and creates infinite color combinations.  Just look at some of the skeins I dyed this week:

Scheepjees  Sock Yarn dyed in "Autumn"

This one was a tan-ish shade that I dyed-over.  I wrapped the yarn into a huge skein around my dining room table (with all the leaves in, which made it 9 feet long, a skein of 18 ft around).  Then I dyed a yard of each of the 6 colors in the Autumn pack: Spiced Pumpkin, Mocha Chino, Maple
sugar, Purple, Turkey Red, and Evergreen.  The yarn should make one-row stripes of each (I think).

Wildfoote dyed "Halloween Fright"

This one was cream-colored originally.  I wrapped it around the table with only one leaf in, so it was about 7 ft. long, 14 ft. around.  I  dyed 4 sections: pumpkin, maple, mocha and the evergreen.  The evergreen got so dark, it's almost black.  Still looks good, I think.

Froehlich Sedrun dyed "Pumpkin Patch"

For this one I meant to be uncommonly clever.  Firstly, I had these 2 skeins of Sedrun which weren't the same shade number, but to the naked eye they looked like the same cream color.  I wound them and the reinforcement thread into a huge skein on table as described above.  I figured that 9 ft of the pumpkin color would give me a nice fat stripe on the sock and that 3 ft sections of the maple sugar and the evergreen would give nice narrow stripes.  Well...

The two yarns took the dye differently.  Blagh!  So they aren't the same "dye lot" but they are going to be a pair of socks just the same!  And notice how I used three of the same colors as the previously-pictured yarn, but the colors came out so much brighter!

Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine dyed "Turkey Red"

This skein was originally an uninspiring wheat color.  So, into the dye vat it went.  I dyed the whole thing a very pale shade of the Turkey Red and then did darker shades down the skein, adding more dye each hour by the 1/8 teaspoons.  I like it!

Well, I am now crazy dye-girl, having lots of fun!  And I am ordering the Winter  

sample pack, so stay tuned!