Color Teaser

So, what did I do last night?

Mixed colors

Dyed yarn

Washed up

Watched TV

I mixed up a very deep blue and a deep red so that I could make a "patriotic" colorway (by request), then mixed up some other fun colors to play around a little more. Below are the preliminary results (meaning I snapped only a few quick pictures this morning because I was running late for work!).

Love those blues!

Patriots

There was a request for red, white, and blue sock yarn. Thus, my Patriots. They're red on one end, white in the middle, and blue on the other end. The red faded to a kind of dark orange as it ran a bit, but I like it.

Autumn colors

Dye Class Delinquents

These are some dk weight skeins leftover from dye class. The center one is dyed in Gaywool Bluegum and the outer two (dubbed Emerald Sky) are in blue and yellow (one is Gaywool Bluegum and Honeycomb, the other is leftover Culinary Colors blue and yellow).

Wisteria Lane and RiverWash Skeins

Left are the Wisteria Lane skeins and right are the RiverWash skeins. Both are superwash wool in fat fingering weight, 4 oz per skein and sold at String of Purls.

Rescue Pullover in Progress

This isn't perhaps the best photo because it shows the yarn as brighter than it really is. This is the failed Mardi Gras skeins overdyed in Indigo and the start of an aran-style pullover.

Monet Scarf

This silk scarf was dyed in the splatter method with a variety of colors. I like to call it the Monet scarf because it looks like an impressionist painting.

Mardi Gras Scarf

This is a silk scarf dyed with the Mardi Gras colors.

Fuschia Knees

At present I have several skeins of yarn "cooking" upstairs.

1. Linie "Bingo" cotton yarn dyed in a light marigold color.
2. Four 50g skeins of a cotton/silk fingering weight yarn being dyed a dark blue.
3. Two 4 oz skeins of Purlie fat fingering weight yarn being dyed the aforementioned dark blue.
4. Eight 4 oz skeins of Louet Gems worsted being dyed in the Mardi Gras colorway.

I managed the spill some of the violet color from the Mardi Gras dye session and it went down the plastic sheeting against which my knee came to rest not seconds later. At first it was a spectacular purple splatter, but cleaning it up with Reduran caused it to subside to a kind of pink/red color.

Clan Ross

These aren't exactly the Clan Ross colors. Those would be only red with blue and green stripes. This one has a brighter red and a deeper blue, plus some brown. But when it was all dyed I looked at it and immediately saw my mother-in-law's clan colors in it, so I named it for her.

Mardi Gras

I'm so proud of this mix. I think it's the best of the lot. I really got a great range of colors.

Tutti-Frutti

An odd skein (75% wool, 25% nylon) dyed from the leftovers of making color swatches, this one is knitting up in a fun array of colors.

Fire Lake

I like the rainbow hues of this one. On the far left is a brown and on the far right is a deep blue/purple.

Campfire

Full skein at the top of the image, and a nice detail of the red-into-yellow transition below. I'm not as crazy about this colorway, but several people have said it's their favorite of the bunch.

It's Worth the Purple Fingers

Here is yarn I dyed this past week, finishing drying at my office on Thursday a.m., thus saving me a trip home between work and sit-and-knit at my LYS.

More Done, and Dyeing Prep

I finished the Manos del Uruguay scarf on Thursday night, and I've been making progress on both the red socks for my SIL Deb and the HoofleFoofle socks. I started a hat from the leftover Manos, but I'm going to frog it and save it for a felting project or something. I do not need another project staring at me, especially with all that is glaring at me from the UFO stash.

I'm going to work on the HoofleFoofle socks until they're done, then start on Deb's socks. After that, I'm going to tackle that cardigan and finally get out from under it.

Oh, and I keep finding UFOs as I dig around into stuff. Yuck.

I've gotten a few more things for my great dyeing adventure. One is a set of measuring spoons and measuring cups that will be ONLY for dyeing. I also got another plastic tray and handily holds these items. I'm going to try out several new yarns for dyeing. I've been using the Henry's Attic Kona DK superwash, but I'm also going to dry Sidhe Sock, Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Thin (just a tiny bit thinner than regular Super Sock), and blue-faced Leicester. And I got myself a large wool winder from off of e-Bay so I can have skeins up to 72" in circumference.

Lorna (my co-conspirator) and I are going to get together and try out some color mixing with some yarn swatches to see what we come up with, and then I'm going to dye yarn until my fingers are purple.

Dyeing for Color

I was so hooked on dyeing yarn from the class at String of Purls that I ordered in some dye, supplies, and undyed yarn to try it on my own at home. I got 16 oz of DK/sport weight washable wool, seven colors of fiber-reactive dye (Navy Blue, Cerulean Blue, Better Blue-green, Marigold, Red Wine, Havanna Brown, and Plum), and I had some fun this past Friday evening. The results were varied, but I can live with it. I had more success than failure, and the failure was instructive.


From left: The "problem" skein, rainbow socks, macaw, and tie-dye blues. See below for more detail on each.

Grrrr! Problems!

My first skein dyed was a mess! I'd done my figure-eight ties faithfully, then I clipped the tails of those ties because I didn't want to chance that they would drip dye into areas where I didn't want dye.

WRONG! Soaking in the soda ash caused the wool to swell up and therefore my little square knots came undone and all of my ties fell out except for the place where the beginning and end of the skein were tied together.

So, after pressing out the excess moisture, I had to do some quick ties (with regular wool that hadn't been "fixed" in the soda ash -- you can see how those ties didn't take the dye). Unfortunately, this had the effect of causing places in the wool skein to dry out. Dry wool = little or no dye filling in. Thus, I had big white spots.

Another problem was spotting (red wine into the marigold). NOT what I'd intended. I think that was sloppiness in applying the dye rather than an errant drip when it was wrapped up.

The overall problem was color. I admit I was experimenting here, but it was awful in my opinion. It's Havanna brown, red wine, marigold, "better" blue-green, and plum — yuck! too much of the same color value, and none of it really harmonious.

The Macaw

Success!!! I started with marigold at one end, then went to cerulean blue, the "better" blue-green, and finally navy blue. The colors in real life are even better than they appear on the screen. The blue-green melts into the navy blue.

The swatch (here and in succeeding posts) are done on US 3.0 needles over 28 sts. (I would cast on 56 sts for socks with this weight.) I think the overall effect on doing socks would be a kind of golden stripe among the blues and greens.