Category Archives: Dyeing

Let there be pictures

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Here you can see the baby alpaca and silk I spun up awhile ago. The dark bit is the alpaca, and the light bit is the silk. What was kind of weird about this one is the silk is more than just one color, but because the alpaca is so dark in comparison, the color changes don’t stand out. I only think this is funny cause I had spun up a different alpaca/silk set of rovings from the same person and the silk looked bland by itself, but once I plied it the color variations jumped right out.

Next, we have the roving a dyed at the dyeing class that wasn’t a few weeks ago. I know the picture looks a bit off but the camera was yelling at me about the battery being low, and using the flash made it look radioactive… probably shouldn’t have put it on a dark background either. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet… I’m thinking I might card each into rolags, throw them all in a bag, stir it up, and spin them in the order it comes out… or I might blend them together.

Norma was going on today about jinxed yarn and how she’s crap. But I’m inclined to say it’s not her… everything lately seems crappy. I’m sure Stephanie’s unmentionable problem is also part of the ensuing crapage. Things I have seen recently that support this theory are 1) I got paid last Monday, and they shorted me 16 hours, 2) A friend of a friend lost his daughter in a car accident on Jan 30th (thankfully, they have the alleged drunk driver in custody last I heard). So, see spectacular crap all around.

Settling into the blahs

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I’ve been feeling kind of blah towards knitting this last week… hence the reason there hasn’t been much here. I doesn’t help that my right wrist has been bothering me. Thankfully, my brace, ice, and BenGay have been close friends, and they work. The funny thing is it’s not actually my wrist that’s the problem, it’s my elbow. The tendons in my forearm pull it out of place and pressure is placed on my ulnar nerve, which makes my wrist and ring and pinky fingers ache and tingle. I have an exercise from my chiropractor that I usually forget to do until things hurt. The only thing that really makes it feel better is not knitting. *sigh*

I’ve begun the sleeves for Le Bete Noir. But they are languishing in my knitting bag with about an inch done of each. I’m glad I’m doing them together… less chance of me doing something to one that I don’t do to the other.

I know I promised pictures from the dyeing class I took on Jan 15. But, I forgot to take my camera (we all saw that one coming right?)… not like it really mattered… I was the only person who showed, so it was pretty laid back and drawn out, which was probably good for the teacher since her daughter was in a flip-over accident the night before. I will however post pictures of the resulting roving as soon as I remember to get it and my digital camera in the same room.

Working for the weekend

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A couple more hours and I’m out of here for a three-day weekend. Unfortunately, there won’t be all that much laying about or sleeping in. Tomorrow, I have to be at my LYS by 10 am for the dyeing class I’m taking, which of course means I need to get there early so I can get a coffee across the street before everything starts. (There will be no sleeping in on Monday either because I have to take my car in for its 30,000 miles service. I know I could have done it not on Monday, but I want to have it done before we drive up to SF on Tuesday to see The Gamster at the ACT.) I spun the Extrafine BFL last night… don’t think I’m going to get all that much out of it since there was only about half and ounce, but it was nice to see how it feels spinning up, and after I ply it tonight I can take it to my dyeing class tomorrow.

Must remember to take camera with me so I can take nifty dyeing-action snapshots.

And then there was dyeing

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Here is the romney yarn that I spun up and dyed for my SIL… it’s about 118 yds of fingering weight. For the dyeing, I decided to just have fun with the food coloring and pick two colors I thought would look good together; I thought turquoise and purple would compliment each other nicely. I mixed 2 oz of vinegar and 6 oz of water with the food coloring drops according to the box. After making sure the colors were well mixed, I tested them on a paper towel. The turquoise looked great… the purple… well, the purple was completely washed out. I had used just the regular food dyes… 6 drops of red, 5 drops of blue… it looked purple in the squeeze bottle, but nothing much showed up on the paper towel. In a fit of panic I pulled out the neon food coloring and decided to go for deep purple, as the box called it. I just added the drops to the squeeze bottle filled with the lame regular purple, shook it up, and paused when I realized that the liquid now looked black… tested it… yup, black. I thought, “What the hell,” and went with it… black and turquoise go together, too. The thoroughly soaked skein was placed on my purple plastic wrap*, and I proceeded to randomly squeeze the dye liquids all over it, patting it to make sure it went all the way through. I went heavy on the turquoise and used the black for accent. Actually, I was perhaps a bit over zealous with the turquoise… okay, I used all 8 oz… I thought it was all getting soaked into the yarn… no, it was forming a puddle under it… lurking… waiting for me to try to pick up my yarn package. The wrapped, sopping yarn went into the microwave. Five minutes was all it took to get the liquid clear. I think it’s lots of fun to watch the package blow up with hot air only to vacuum seal when the microwave stops… so cool! *grin* I rinsed the yarn with hot water, then slightly less hot water, slowly bringing it down to a more manageable temp. Then, I washed it in a citrus shampoo and conditioner to do away with the vinegar smell.

And here is the result of my dyeing adventure…



I’m not sure if I should name it or something… I have no idea what I would name it. I have a tendency to be very descriptive in my naming, which would cause this to end up something like Monterey Bay Lightning Storm.

I stopped by my LYS on Saturday and picked out both a matching and contrasting yarn to up the yardage. I went with a cotton viscose blend that’s really shiny**. One is a blue, which looks really nice, and the other is a peacock blueish green. I think they are numbers 12 and 16 here.

I hope my SIL likes it… I have no idea what she might be able to knit up with this selection…

*Unfortunately, purple plastic wrap was all I had… makes it damn hard to tell if all the color is exhausted…

**I like shiny.

Do I have to go back?

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Back at work after a beautiful week off… if only the week had been longer… but we can’t have the week adding on extra days just for me, other people might get jealous… or pissed if they have to work. The unfortunate thing of the week off was I have come to realize that I need at least a month off from both work and school. The nervous twitch in my left eye actually went away for a couple of days; it was back this morning. *sigh*

I didn’t really get any knitting done… I finished my bookmark, so now I need to block it. I guess it will get into the mail eventually. I did get the spinning for my sister-in-law’s Christmas gift done… approximately 118 yards of fingering weight romney. I think I need to practice the whole spinning bigger. I’ve gotten damn good at spinning lace weight, which means I can’t spin anything else. Maybe if I got a lazy kate… just spin lots of lace weight singles and start making 3…5… 8-ply yarn… I’d be spinning forever in order to get anywhere.

Anyways, the yarn came out pretty nice; now I need to dye it. I don’t know my sister-in-law very well, so I have no idea what colors she likes. I was thinking of going with a green blue combo… everyone likes green and blue, right? Now to find a time my husband won’t be mad at me for making the whole apartment smell like vinegar and wet sheep.

Did I really say I didn’t get much knitting done a couple paragraphs ago? I did, look at that. *groan* I actually did work on the Sister Shawl at Thanksgiving. I can’t believe I forgot… especially since knitting seems to be one of the few ways I can impress my family. Knitted lace seems to truly amaze them, and it rocks my socks that it’s my skill they’re impressed with. I think it’s funny that my mother has told me more than once, “We never thought you’d be one to knit.” What she did think I’d do, I have no clue.

Sadly, knitting will be laid by the wayside for most of this week unless I need a stress break. Must get to work on the 15-20 page paper that is due come Saturday. Most of the work is reading all the articles and books I’ve been collecting… should have gotten started on it over the weekend, but laying around in my pajamas for a few days made me feel better. I’m such a procrastinator. At least I’m getting better… a couple years ago as an undergrad I would have just begun looking for sources right about now.

An experiment with food coloring

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I had a skein of NZ Romney that I had spun up when I first got my wheel several months ago. Since it was the test skein for my wheel, I decided it should continue to meet its fate as a guinea pig. Thus, it was chosen as the test skein for dyeing with food coloring in my microwave.

The Results:

I left it in twisted skein form and half-submerged it in “dusty pink”… at least that’s the color the box of neon food coloring said I should get with the ratio of drops I used. When I was done with the one side, the skein was flipped and half submerged in “sky blue”… again the color according to the box. The purple, of course, came from the mixing of the two colors. Here and there, you can still see a little of the light grey the skein started out as.