Emily’s Knits

Tonight I had a particularly unpleasant experience. About two weeks ago I’d spun a loooong green blended merino single from some fibre I really like (from SarasTextureCrafts on etsy). Unfortunately, for some reason I’d thought it was a good idea to give it some good, strong overtwisting. The sort that leaves tiny little kinks that you really have to apply tension to get rid of.

This makes plying quite the annoying endeavour! I tried to work a lot of them out as I went, but I’m not sure how much that accomplished. I’ll get some water going tomorrow evening to set the twist on this skein, wind it off the spindle, and find out what happens. It won’t be perfect by any means, but hopefully it won’t be a disaster.

The one saving grace is that this yarn is intended to be cut up into little pieces and used by my Mom around the holidays to attach tags to the handbags she makes and sells. Kinks that still show up after finishing the yarn should be able to be worked to the ends or simply cut out while making the shorter pieces.

They say you learn things every day and I’ve always found that to be true. Some days I learn more interesting things than others. Somedays I learn things that are more applicable than others.

Today one of the things that I have learned is ‘when spinning variegated fibre don’t spin one dark section, one light section, and then a second dark section, 2-ply with an Andean Bracelet, and then expect it all to be roughly evenly coloured!’  Next time I will remember to try to setup my single so that I ply light with dark most of the way along it, rather than dark with dark and light with light.

I’m currently working with a Merino/Tencel blend called Fairy Wings from Spincerely‘s etsy store.  Doesn’t it look just luscious?  It feels that way too!  I love the feel of the drop spindles I’ve been using recently, from Dragoncraft.  They’re about an ounce and a quarter – just the right weight for me.  This one they made just for me!

[ravelry link]

The plan is for this yarn to be made into a Beach Glass shawl for my little sister.  At the moment I probably have 1/3 of the yarn I need.

My freshman roommate from CMU Jess was in town this weekend.  On Sunday we played around with dyeing some yarn with supplies from Knit Picks.  This was my first effort, but Jess had done some previously.  I ordered some Jaquard acid dyes (Vermillion, Teal, Sapphire Blue, and Purple) and we made a trip to the grocery store for handfuls of Koolaid packages.  We both lean instinctively towards blues and greens, but Safeway’s lack of beverages in a family other than red forced us to experiment a bit.

The first try was just to get a feel for the process.  We kettle-dyed a skein of 75/25 sock wool in purple Jaquard dye.  It’s a little muted, but it should make a nice pair of socks.

Hand-painted Koolaid all-wool sock yarns from KnitPicks.  The first one is striped in yellow, orange, and 3 colours of red – you can just barely see the darker colours peeking around the back and bottom.  The second randomly was coloured with yellow, orange, and strawberry.

Next came a more complicated acid dye combination.  We had four skeins of Peruvian fingering weight wool and decided they’d look nice as shawls.  That meant pairing them so we would have around 880yds per shawl.  The first two we wanted to try as a combination of blue and teal.  Dye the blue half, simmer some more water, flip the skein, and dye the remainder teal.  We overlooked physics in the first step however, and quickly noticed that the blue dye was siphoning up the skein into the white part!  That’s what happens when you wet the entire skein and then put the remaining end below the water level in the kettle.  We fixed the height issue and carried on.

<<Unfortunately I can’t get a picture of this to upload at the moment, the warning says the max file size is 2M, but iPhoto says the file is 1.4M.  I’ll try again later.>>

There are plans to dye the second set in the same manner, but with vermillion and purple.

Finally, we decided to use what we had learned about uneven heights and dyeing portions of the yarn to create a self-striping sock yarn that changes from dark teal to light across the skein.  We wet the entire skein of a 75/25 sock blend, put half the yarn (the dark end) in the kettle, and left the other end sitting in a ziplock container below the water level in the pot.  The dye gradually siphoned up the skein to pool in the second container and dyed the yarn it held.