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November 11, 2016

Adventures in Yarn Dyeing, Part 2

November 11, 2016

dye-3

So, it’s been about a year since I last dyed yarn. Terribly unhappy with the color for the Iridium sweater, I thought I’d overdye it and see what happens. Sweater quantity of yarn is a LOT OF YARN, and I couldn’t just … toss it or give it away.

I was shooting for a navy-ish color, so I just used blue, with a little black mixed in. I weighed the yarn, and then calculated how much dyestock I’d need to get the shade I would want.

I threw the dye in the pot, gave it a quick stir and then dumped the yarn it. That ‘quick stir’ was a mistake. When you pour dyestock into a pot of water, it doesn’t mix. The color kind of suspends there, which can lead to some really great tonal colors, but I was aiming for a more consistent application of color than what I’ve got.

dye
I also have some Blue Faced Leicester sport weight undyed yarn hanging out in my yarn stash. Drachenfels has been in my knitting queue for almost 2 years, and I bought this yarn to make one. I split the yarn – 70g, 125g and the rest 205g – and dyed it. I was aiming for pink but I added too much blue to the red and now I’ve got this light purple. Happy accident. I like the light purple. The two grays are made from the same dye, just a different ‘depths of shade’ – the light is at 0.5 DOS while the darker… well, I started at 0.75 DOS, but then I poured more dyestock into the pot. I don’t exactly know what DOS I ended up with. Either way, I’m in love with these!

dye-2

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Posted by norine
Filed Under: knitting Tagged: adventures in hand dyeing, knit, shawl, sweater, wip

February 20, 2015

yarn yarn yarn yarn yarn-y yarn

February 20, 2015

(cue Bad Cop from the LEGO movie)

Hand Dyed Yarn-3

 

LOOK AT ALL THESE CUTE MINI SKEINS!
Can you tell I’m excited about them? It is because I dyed them myself, using only 5 colors of acid dye.

I took a class a few weeks ago that was all about yarn dyeing. What they are, what you need, how to do hand-paint and how to immersion dye – and how to do this all safely. I left the class with a hand painted skein of dk weight, an immersion/kettle-dyed skein of sock weight yarn, stained fingers and bunch of excitement about dyeing my own yarns.

Hand Dyed Yarn

This is all sock weight yarn I separated into 5 gram mini skeins, winding them up on this contraption called a niddy-noddy* – fun name, right? I set out to experiment with mixing primary colors, playing around with the strength of the dye stock and adding gray or black to mix. I took notes on my color ratios for reference.

Processed with VSCOcam with t1 preset

Now, I don’t knit socks. At least not yet, anyway. And these skeins look so pretty all stack up, but I am going to use them. I started making hexipuffs for a Bee Keeper’s Quilt. As my friend Heather commented on Instagram – its when quilting and knitting collide! These little knitted hexi’s are really fun and quick to make. I’m not sure how long it will be before I have enough to stitch together for a lap sized blanket, but that’s what I’m working towards.

Hand Dyed Yarn-4

*I made the niddy-noddy using this helpful tutorial – link.

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Posted by norine
Filed Under: knitting Tagged: adventures in hand dyeing, hexipuffs

::The Name::

Five Baht Elephant. My mother is from Thailand, where elephants are royal animals. Growing up Mom would tell us to save our pennies, "in case a man came to our door selling elephants." At the time we thought it was the most absurd thing ever. Now I realize it was the Thai version of saving for a rainy day. Lets hope that we can buy an elephant for only five baht!

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