Tag: dye

Dye Job Part 2

by T, posted in knitting, Spinning

I have to apologize for not being attentive in my blogging. I have been overwhelmed by work/classes and housely duties that I’ve ignored for too long. I did have some more fun this weekend with food dye.

1- On my needles: 1 entrelac baby blanket still in progress. This will last the rest of my life 2- Mulberry Hat from Modern Top Down Knitting which is coming out too big and has been put down till I have the brain power to figure out where I went wrong.

2- On my wheel, brown alpaca from Nancy in our spinning group. I want to make a four ply yarn for a jacket/sweater with three parts wool one part alpaca. Florida is one of the few places where “You know, Alpaca is really warm. . .” could be a bad thing.

3- Out of my dye pot. Okay, this was never actually in a dye pot. I used the Knitty instructions with the Cold Pour Method. I thought this came out wonderful. I even created a giant niddy noddy with pvc to skein it up. I put an old plastic Christmas tablecloth on the kitchen table before I started. I wasn’t sure how messy this would get. I did put paper towels under the different colored sections to prevent mixing. As you can see from the pictures below, I wound up with blue hands and there is a green fingerprint in a yellow section of yarn. All in all, I think it was great. I’m sending this off to Mom so I won’t have finished project pictures unless she provides them.

Oops, I don’t have enough yarn!

by T, posted in knitting

One of the first things that you learn when you begin knitting, is that when working on a project, make sure you have enough to finish it.  Patterns tell you how many skeins you’ll need or at least usually how many yards.  It’s better to have more yarn than necessary that not enough.  It’s also best to have enough of the same color lot so that you don’t have those pesky differences in shading.  Normally, when yarn is made, the dye is created and all of yarn is made with that/those colors.  For example, XYZ wool dyes 200 skeins of purple wool on Tuesday.  On Thursday, it will dye 200 more skeins of wool.  Those two dye lots are going to be a tiny bit different, no matter what.  So, if you want to knit your purple sweater, it’s best to get all your yarn out of one dye lot to make sure the front and back (or top and bottom) are the same shade of purple.

With this in mind, you have to know what you are using your yarn for before you buy it.  I had bought about 6 skeins of Paton’s Baby yarn about a year ago when my friend was pregnant.  I made a small baby blanket and set the rest aside.  A little over a month ago I decided to make another blanket and figured I could go out and find more if I needed it.  After all, it is a popular company with yarn available in Michael’s and Jo-Anns.  I was at the end of the last skein and went out to find more.  Paton’s Beehive Baby Sport Yarn in Natural Girl was nowhere to be found.  Rather than keep searching, I decided to finish the blanket early.  The border had to be finished in 10 rows rather than 12.  All in all, I was lucky and the blanket looks fabulous- but I was lucky.  Did I learn my lesson?  Absolutely not!