Keeping up

Hello everyone! After a long period of silence I'm back! This blog just kind of faded to the background over the summer holidays, sorry about that. That does mean there is quite a bit of catching up to do, and I'll post the most interesting stuff over the next few weeks mixed with a few holiday themed posts :). Probably the most exciting thing after the summer holidays (and loads of yarnie souvenirs) is that I bought a 15 liter pot on sale. I've tried it out and it's just amazing! The yarn and the dye have all the room in the world to move around in and it really does give different results than in the little pot. I'll expand on my dyeing adventures in following posts, but to get started here is one of my latest dye experiments:

For this mini skein gradient (200 gram divided into 10 skeins of 20 gram) I used the Landscape colours daintree and kelp, a bright applegreen and a darker seagreen. The yarn is a 100% wool DK base I bought on a fair somewhere over the summer and it didn't have a label, so I don't exactly know whats in it but I guess it's non superwash merino with about 200 meters per 100 gram. I dyed it for someone in a Ravelry group who's working on a very special project (more about that later when her pattern actually comes out, probably sometime in February ;) ).

To get started, you'll need dye, measuring spoons, scales, mixing containers, a cooking pot, a pot or dish to hold the yarn, some plastic tongs (or something to grab the yarn with) and some gloves. I'm also duty bound to inform you to use a dust mask! Please read the 'dyeing' page to the left for more info on prep and materials.

I soaked the yarn overnight in just water, no added vinegar. I filled the pot almost entirely, so there'll be enough water for the colours to spread and mix. For the first colour, I added 2 gram of the colour daintree to a mixing container. Adding about 100 ml of hot water to the container, shake well to make sure all the dye powder is dissolved. I poured the dye in and stirred to make sure it distributed evenly. I then gently put the yarn in (2 mini skeins) and stirred a bit. Turning on the heat, pop on the lid and wait for it to start simmering. Then turn the heat low and maintain the temperature for around 30 minutes. After that, remove the two mini skeins and put in warm water to lessen the temperature shock. Repeat this process with 1,5 gram daintree & 0,5 gram kelp; 1 gram daintree & 1 gram kelp; 0,5 gram daintree & 1,5 gram kelp; 2 gram kelp with 2 mini skeins each time. Even if some dye is left over from the previous mini skeins, just put in the next round of dye mix and mini skeins. I felt it helped smoothe the colour transitions. This does mean you're putting room temperature yarn into a ~85°C dyebath, but I didn't have any problems. I did lower it in gently and then didn't touch it again until it was ready to come out. In the end, the dyebath will still be quite dark, so I put the first two skeins (dyed with only daintree) in for a few minutes to darken it a bit. I took it out when I liked the look of the colour. 

           

                         

The difference between my old and new pot ;)

                          

After you've done all the mini skeins, you'll have a container full of dyed yarn :D I let it sit and cool down completely in the pot, then I rinsed it and gave it a soak in wool wash. Here are the pictures after it dried:

I absolutely love the way this turned out, and I can't wait to see it knitted up! We'll have to be patient though, the recipient of these is working on a design for knitted birdhouses (yes, I know!) and expects to publish it in February. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed she'll send me some sneak peeks! In the meantime, I promise I'll keep updating this blog on everything that's been going on since the start of the summer (a lot...) and what's happening over the holidays!

Image via: @andrea_sopranzi