kmkat and her kneedles

I wonder what would happen if I...

One day a couple weeks ago Smokey was taking a nap and I was doing crosswords on my iPad while keeping him company. As I figured out the three-letter word for a particular lyricist ("IRA"), my mind wandered to a yarny problem. What could I do with the remaining pink/orange/purple sock yarn now that I had used about half of it in fingerless gloves? The obvious answer, to me at least, was to overdye it. But with what color? Red? I had plenty of red yarns. Blue? Ditto purple yarn. Hmmm...

Well, if green and red make brown (and they do), I wonder if green and pink would make tan? (Hover over photos for additional comments.)

 
Lemon-lime Kool-Aid, here I come.
(And let us rejoice that my Kool-Aid stash included lemon-lime.)

 

 
Pre-dye soaking.                                                       Kool-Aid is dissolved.     

              

Dyebath is ready.

 

 
The dyeing begins. 

     

Stopwatch shows 5:16. Dyebath not quite exhausted yet.

 

 
I took a photo of my kitchen counter as the iPhone lay there. As one does.

 

   
Dyebath exhausted.                  Dyed yarn in clear rinse.

Wet.

 

Dry.

 

What I knit in 2013.

Hover over the photos to see the comments.

Twelve squares.

 

Five baby bibs.

  

 

Four pairs of socks.*

 

 

 

Four pairs fingerless gloves of varying lengths.

 

 

 

Four hats.

 

 

Four dishcloths.

 

 

I actually knit far more than four. I was on a dishcloth rampage for a few weeks last summer to use up odds and ends of discloth cotton, and it was the perfect mindless project while I was still taking painkillers after the hip replacement. These are the only ones that got photographed, though. The others are in the kitchen rotation and are, of course, no longer camera-worthy.

 

Two scarves.

  

 

Two cowls.

 

 

 

One pair felted clogs.

 

 

One double-knit felted hotpad.

 

 

 

One pair of mittens fit for Sissy Hankshaw, if Sissy Hankshaw were eight years old.

 

One Red Quadrant.

 

One swea--, er, finished one sweater.  

...and started but didn't finish another one.

 

I also dyed some yarn...

and frogged some long cabled stockings... 

...plus any number of intermediate cowls...

...and trials...

...and errors...

...and that is why knitting is such a great hobby: if we make a mistake, we can rip it out and do it again right/better.

 

* Everything with a blue border is something I knit for myself. 

Le tuque du voyageur!

When the weather turned cold a couple weeks ago, Smokey went on a quest to find the hat I knit him last winter -- the one that somehow never got chronicled here. He found it, no problem, in a box of hats at the top of the stairs. 

And there was great rejoicing.

The hat in all its extended glory. You can just barely see the fold line slightly to the left of center.

 

Voyageur style, with the hat sagging down the back. Somehow this one
isn't quite long enough to do that effectively.

 

With folded brim.

 

Yarn: Rowan Pure Wool 4-ply, fingering weight. Several skeins. Color was originally the creatively named 450. I overdyed it with Rit Denim and achieved the look of a well-broken-in pair of blue jeans. Hat is knit with two strands held together. I knit two swatches for him to decide between: single strand on US#2 and double strand on US#6. Surprising me, he chose the second. But it meant the hat went a lot faster so I was pleased by his choice.
Needles: Addi Turbo US#6/4.0mm.
Pattern: an authentic voyageur hat pattern shared with me by Dale-Harriet.

Since this is a double-layer hat with four layers of knitted woolen fabric over the ears, it is W.A.R.M. Perfect for a Wisconsin winter.

 

Adventures in dyeing, part B.

You may recall that I have made a couple tuques from an old voyageur pattern.

 

Smokey liked them so well that he wanted one, too. Tragically, I did not have anything like enough of that gray-blue DK superwash wool for another hat. (Blue-gray is an authentic color for tuques, according to my source. Red is the #1 authentic color, but Smokey is a blue guy.)

I searched my stash and came up with six balls of Rowan Pure Wool 4-ply fingering weight in a non-pastel light blue.

I showed it to Smokey. He said it would do, but I could tell he was less than enthusiastic.

Remembering my success with the tea-dyeing, I tried that with the Rowan, hoping to make it darker.

That's the Rowan in the center. At left is some Knit Picks Gloss Fingering (70/30 merino/silk) and at right, the tiny ball of the yarn left over from the two tuques. 

As you can see, the tea dyeing made the yarn darker but NOT better. I stared at it for several days hoping to convince myself that it was good. That it was not a dirty greenish-blueish-gray, roughly the color of a week-old corpse.

Back to the dye pot.

This time I went all pro and bought a bottle of Rit dye in Faded Denim. I followed the instructions on the bottle to the letter except that I made the dye solution roughly half strength. If the yarn wasn't dark enough, I could use the rest of the bottle and make it darker; if I used made the dye bath full strength and the yarn got too dark, I was screwed.

While I was at it, I decided to tea-dye some red Black Bunny Bamberino that I won awhile back and pictured in yesterday's post. My kitchen was quite the chemistry lab for a few days. That's the blue yarn in the Rit dye in the foreground, the red yarn in the tea solution in the second, lower pot.

Please ignore the blackened portion of the range front; that is left over from my epic oven fail.

 

 

 

Rowan 4-ply in the pot.

  

Drying on my rack in the laundry room. Looking good, although the yarn was still damp.

 

You can see that the dye job was not absolutely even. Apparently I had not managed to get the yarn 100% saturated with water before immersing it in the dye bath.

 

Tied the skeins a bit too tightly in a few places, too.

It was my hope that the unevenness would turn out to be attractive once knit up. I wound the blue yarn back into balls and swatched.

Do you know how hard it is to get a good photo of dark blue knitting? This is the best I could do, but I think you can see that it resembles a nicely broken-in pair of blue jeans. Smokey pronouced it perfect.

I did one swatch on US#3 needles and one, double-stranded, on US#6s. He liked the heavier one better. (Yay, knitting on #6s goes ever so much faster than on #3s.) And I loved knitting the Rowan; nice stuff, indeed. When Smokey locates the hat -- he is sure it is somewhere in the house -- I will blog that, too.

And that is my entrance* to the wonderful world of dyeing yarn. Not planning to go pro or anything crazy like that, but it is nice to know that if a yarn's color is not pleasing to me it may be possible to improve it.

Also:

• The red Bamberino was a nice enough red but a little too saturated and too pink for my taste.
• The red yarn on the middle of the rack up there? That was after tea-dyeing it once. 
• Still too bright of a red.
• Dyed it again with stronger tea solution.
• Still pretty red, but probably okay.
• (much much later) Yes, the over-dyed red is quite nice now. Several squares in the red quadrant of the sock yarn afghan are knit from it, and I fell in love with it.

 

* I experimented with Kool Aid dyeing a couple years earlier with pleasing results. Two of those yarns were used in the Red Quadrant, and the third will probably be used in the Blue Quadrant.

Adventures in dyeing, part 1.

(Discovered this post and tomorrow's in the drafts folder. Time to go public.)

Sometime last year In December 2010 I won some Black Bunny fingering weight yarn at Webs. I blogged about it at the time, but here is a photo to refresh your memory.

These are both lovely yarns -- merino blended with alpaca or cashmere or bamboo or fairy dust. I loved the red and the blue but I eventually decided they are both a bit too saturated for a scarf to be worn next to my face, which is what I intended to make from them. They would serve in colorwork, but I'm not fired up about about practicing colorwork right now so that is out. The intense colors could be fine in socks, but socks from these yarns would have to be handwashed, and that way lies madness. (Not that I will never in my life handwash a pair of socks, but I'm not that crazy yet.)

(Edited to add: I recently discovered that my washer has a Hand Wash cycle (who knew?), so hand wash socks may be in my future. But probably not from these yarns.)

What to do, what to do? I have been pondering this question for nearly a year.

Last week it came to me: I would overdye the red and blue with tea, just enough to tone down the color intensity.

On Sunday I googled "tea dying yarn" and the first hit was an instruction page at Knit Picks. I made a quick trip to the nearest supermarket to purchase a box of El Cheapo tea bags and the game was on. The entire dyeing process was easy-peasy.

Results of the Black Bunny yarn:

You may notice that the entire photo looks a little greenish. I had to tweak the color in order to get the yarn color accurate. 

To recap, before and after:

Success! The color now is more of a deep teal, and the yarn retained its tone-on-tone character. 

And here is the exact method I used, not that you should follow my example, but if I decide to attempt this again I will have a record of how I did it.

The blue method:

• 12 cups water, bring to a boil
• Add 12 El Cheapo tea bags
• Return to the boil; steep for 30 minutes.
• Add 100g yarn wool/cashmere/nylon yarn that has been soaking in warm water while you fiddled with the steps above.
• Soak until dye water is nearly clear and/or cool. 
• Drain, rinse yarn. 
• Roll in towel, hang to dry.

I also did something that isn't supposed to work, and it didn't. I tried to tea-dye some pale beige Rowan Calmer.

The Calmer method:

• 6 cups hot water from the tap
• Add 2 El Cheapo tea bags
• Bring to the boil
• Add 50 grams Calmer that has been thoroughly soaked in warm water.
• Steep 30 minutes, drain, rinse, roll in towel, hang to dry.

The dyed yarn looked pretty much indistinguishable from the original color.

I don't know if the failure was because You Can't Dye Synthetics or because I only used 2 tea bags. Maybe I'll try again... someday.

That sock yarn afghan I mentioned t'other day.

Like many of us, I have entertained the fantasy of knitting an afghan from my sock yarn leftovers. I even started one a couple years ago but quickly discovered that there are significant gauge differences between the standard 75/25 superwash/nylon yarns of Opal, Regia, and their ilk, and the 100% merinos of the artisanal dyers.

>>>frog pond.

Now I am trying again. This time I hope to compensate for the difference by varying my needle size.

So far, so good.

The ruffly edge is my provisional cast on using Tahki, which is a DK weight smooth cotton yarn. Haven't decided yet whether I will go with a knitted border or attached i-cord, but that fiddly part where I have to pick up a gazillion stitches just got eliminated.

The square at upper left is Blue Moon Socks That Rock lightweight worked on a US2.5 (3.0mm) needle. The rest is various standard sock yarns worked on a US#3 (3.25mm) needle. I think my strategy is working :-)

Now, please direct your attention to the yarn cake at upper right. I dyed that last night with some strawberry Kool-Aid.

Before and after:

I got pretty much exactly what I wanted. A bit less color would have been better, but I am happy with this. The formula for Kool-Aid dyeing is one package of Kool-Aid per ounce of yarn. I had .9 ounces of the leftover yarn and used about half a package of Kool-Aid.

Now comes the part where I beg for yarn.

Last year I used up a lot of my sock yarn leftovers when I made the doggie poop bag holders for the local animal shelter. I still have a lot of full skeins that I can steal from, but my supply of leftovers is limited.

If you have some sock yarn leftovers that are burning a hole in your stash, would you consider sending them to me? Each square takes xx grams of yarn. Please do not send me full skeins -- that would be way too much and I would feel terribly guilty and have to do some ridiculous penance like scourging myself or fasting for a month to mollify my conscience and you don't want that, do you? So, leftovers only, please. E-mail me for my mailing address -- click on "About" at upper right corner of blog to get e-mail addy.

TIA!

Mutterings. And stuff.

1. Sophisticated :: Audrey Hepburn
2. Pelicans :: fish.
3. Flat :: stomach.
4. Cheekbones :: high.
5. Possible :: possibilities.
6. England :: island.
7. Jacket :: potato.
8. Sunflower :: seeds.
9. Hungry :: pelican.
10. Accent :: French.

* * * * *

I am working on a two-part post about my dyeing experiments adventures. Soon...

* * * * *

The horrific cold seems to have passed on to some other locale. Our temp is at or above freezing :) So naturally, I finally finished my extra-long fingerless gloves, the ones to keep my forearms warm whilst reading in bed in our cold bedroom.

I tried to wear them last night but had to take them off after a couple minutes because they were... too warm.

I don't know, do you think it will get ever cold again?

Yarn: Colorado Yarns Durango (10-ply worsted, 50/47/3 wool/acrylic/rayon),  colorway 5, a tweedy ecru; 1.3 skeins, 138 yds.
Needles: Addi Turbos US#7.
Pattern: Cobbled together, but I used the thumb gusset from Ann Budd's Handy Book of Knitting Patterns. I cast on a couple extra stitches to allow for more room in the forearm (could have used a couple more) and decreased them away before the wrist.

* * * * *

Laundry day, hand washables:

Actually, these are all perfectly machine washable and dryable except for the blue socks, upper row, at right. I found out the hard way that they will felt (Pagewood Farms, Denali Hand-dyed sock yarn). But I am *practicing* using my Hand Wash cycle.

Here is my *dryer* for the hand washables:

I took this while the fan was moving to spare you the sight of how filthy the thing is. Really need to clean it... someday.