Tour de Fleece Injury Leads to.......DYEING ALL THE THINGS!

Happy Tuesday!

We're still in the midst of TdF and Stash Dash and all that. And I could talk about that but I'm not going to. Instead, we're going to talk about what I did about two weeks ago, right at the beginning of TdF, in the midst of an injury that put me off my wheel for a few days.

Yeah, I dyed some things....

These were all dyed on July 3, 2017 on our back deck, in the sun :)

I had a little bit of leftover red and yellow dye from my last dyeing project and while I didn't think about putting in the yellow at first, I'm kind of glad I did. I speckled the red about the yarn, turned it over, and then I eyed the small bottle of yellow leftovers and just soaked an end of my unwound hank. I'm not much of a red or yellow person but I'm rather happy with the results.

This one didn't go quite as planned. I had intended it to be closer to a 50/50 division but the black had other ideas. This was also leftover dye from my last dyeing project. Even though it didn't go as planned, I'm pleased with the results. I might try this again with different colors, just for shiggles.

Both the red/yellow and the black/white were on the Malabrigo Sock bases I bought a few weeks ago.

These two were dyed together, in the same container, at the same time. They are not perfect matches because that's not how dyeing in this manner works but they have the same tonal qualities. The good news is that I exhausted this leftover purple dye.....meaning I used up the purple dye from my last project by soaking it all up in the yarn. I also used the rest of the red & yellow dyes above but not in this manner. When I pulled these out of the container, the water was clear.

I soaked these blues like I did the purples. This was the only color I made on dyeing day; everything else was done using leftover dye. And what's with the white spots? Well, obviously I didn't make a dark yarn and it exhausted quickly, leaving some white/extremely light blue spots toward the top of the container.

The last four (purples & blues) were done on the Sanguine Gryphon Traveller base (which is the same as the Cephalopod Yarns and Verdant Gryphon Traveller base), which is a DK weight. However, these were cone ends so they're not the full 280 yds. I also matched them based on weight. Two were labeled 3.1 oz and the other two were labeled 3.4 oz. Again, I'm not displeased with the unexpected results.


So, there's my dyeing adventures :) Oh, and if you missed the "injury" in my Year of Projects...I got a shin splint (yes, just one) that prevented me from spinning on my double-treadle wheel properly. ::sigh::

Yran Dyeing Adventures: Third Time's the Charm?

Happy Wednesday :)

I know that Wednesdays are usually reserved for WIP Wednesdays but I'm throwing in some yarn dyeing adventures. We've previously see the process of me making a mess while dyeing yarn (because it is a messy process). This time around, I think I'm just going to give you the results....

These are both Malabrigo Twist as a base (100% merino, Aran weight, 150 yds each). They were both full immersion in separate dye baths. The purple one had some black drops added to the dye bath toward the end, which is why there are also some darker purple-grey spots.

The rest of these are the Sanguine Gryphon Bugga base (which is the same as the Bugga base for Cephalopod Yarns and the Verdant Gryphon - a 70/20/10 Merino-Cashmere-Nylon blend, sport weight, with 412 yds/125 g). However, these were the cone ends so they are not full 412 yd skeins. They run about 250 yds each but I haven't measured/weighed them so I'm unsure of the actual yardage.

This one was done with two different dye baths and the yarn was placed in both at the same time. The original idea in my head was that there was going to be sections of red, sections of yellow, and sections of white.......but I neglected to take into account that the dye was going to travel across the "barrier" and mix a little bit so there aren't really any truly white sections. I'm okay with it, though.

This was also done with two dye baths but since I saw what happened to the red/yellow skein above, I didn't bother trying to keep the black and purple separate (also, this is more of a purple and less of a blue - I could not capture the color correctly). I let them meld together and then I did a dunk in the purple to finish off the lighter area in the middle followed by a dunk in the black. Okay, "dunk" isn't the right word...I soaked the middle section in both colors separately for a bit of time in an attempt to even out the lighter section.

While all that was going on, I did these two:

These were full immersion in the same dye bath at the same time. They're slightly tonal but they're the same colorway, which is a new thing for me.



These were all dyed on Saturday, June 3, 2017 in the afternoon. No matter how careful I am and wearing gloves and the whole thing...I still wind up with dye on my hands. ::sigh::

I hope you're all having a lovely Wednesday. I'll be back on Friday...and Saturday...and Sunday...........yuuuup.

Adventures in Yarn Dyeing: The Second Time

Happy Thursday :) As promised, a new post of my yarn dyeing adventures.

These were dyed on April 9, 2017.

Ever since my first solo adventure, I was itching to try it again so I actually went through my stash (made much easier by January's Organization of the Stash) and started pulling out skeins that were either "natural" or otherwise dyeable. I came up with several but I started with these three.

A skein of Knit Picks Palette Fingering that was meant to be dyed. I picked this up in a destash quite awhile ago, before I was even pondering dyeing...and the thought I had? I can dye it someday.

Yeah, I knew it was going to happen even then.

A skein of Malabrigo Rios. I never really had any concrete plans for this yarn and I know Malabrigo is a good base.

A skein of Nashua Creative Focus Superwash. I actually had this hanging out in my destash but it's been there awhile so I thought I'd try dyeing it.

This dyeing adventure started out the same: mix the dye. I wound up making the four basic colors: red, blue, yellow, and black. I knew one of the worsted skeins was going to have green so I mixed some blue and yellow to get a perfect Slytherin green (don't ask me how it happened because I'm not entirely sure - I mixed until I liked it). I also knew I wanted one to have purple so I mixed the blue and red until I liked it. It's more on the blue end but that doesn't bother me. I still had leftover of the three primaries, luckily.

I started out with the Nashua and wound up with this:

Once it was finished and rehanked, it looked like this:

Since I had to wind this onto the niddy-noddy myself, I know it's not too terribly tangled. It hasn't told me what it wants to be yet but it's leaning toward a hat.

The Malabrigo decided it wanted to be similar to the Nashua but it wanted purple as well.

I had it laid out like this and it was dyed that way (well, mostly that way - you can see some purple on the green side in a few places):

When it was hanked up again, it looked like this:

This skein may be wildly tangled. All I did with it was get it out of the above shape, added a few extra ties, and soaked/dyed it that way. I won't know until I either try to wind it or if I decide to reskein it. It should be okay. I usually don't have trouble with Malabrigo being tangled when I wind it.

The last skein, however........

When I took the label off, I expected it to be tied at the middle around each side and I could just dangle it like any other skein of yarn. Oh I was so wrong. I have no idea how they skeined this yarn so, I just took it out, soaked it as it was tied, and dyed it as it was tied.

It's difficult to see in the above photo so this one gives you a better idea:

It looked like it had been a long loop that had somehow been made into three loops on each side. So, I dyed one side with the black and did a rainbow on the other side.

This one had to be hand wound after it was dry because I had no idea how it was even attached and I didn't dare try to lay it out in a loop of some sort. It turned out to be somewhat correct in how it was dyed. Sort of. I still had to do some work to wind it, though. It basically worked kind of in a figure eight pattern. So, if you start with the end of the purple, it would go over to the black, pick up about three loops of black, then weave back over to the rainbow side and do about three passes of the rainbow (starting with the red) and once you got to the purple, it would swing back over. The only way I can describe the shape is it was like a 3D hour glass shape.

I had a slight mishap at the very end of the skein where there were fuzz barfs and the only way to get them apart was to cut it....but I cut the wrong part. Luckily, it was at the end so there's only that teeny ball that suffered.

It looks much too pastel in the above photo. The black turned into a grey, which was fine, and all the rainbow colors because a bit more muted and faded a bit. I'm okay with that.

I don't know that I'll ever be able to recreate that experiment. Maybe. I could try it someday.

I got everything wrapped up and I did the steamer outside this time. Last time the house smelled like wet wool and vinegar. It wasn't a pleasant smell. So, outside with it. I let it steam for about an hour, switching the containers halfway.

A few things I did differently this time:

1. I worked on plastic bags that I had taped down (white, so I could see splatters better) and wrapped the yarn separately into saran wrap.

2. I dunked the skeins in the vinegar water rinse in a somewhat more logical order: first the Nashua (green only), then the Malabrigo (green and purple), and then the Knit Picks (rainbow). I knew the black was going to slough off quite a bit and I didn't want to cross-contaminate the other two skeins. Neither the green or purple bled when I rinsed, which was lovely.

3. I mixed the dye right into the squeeze bottles and adjusted using the bottles. I don't know that I'll do it again that way but it worked.

4. I kept my gloves on and my hands didn't get as much dye on them.



Since I finished these, I've taken a little dyeing break. I have more yarn I can dye (I found a couple skeins of Malabrigo Twist and I have a bunch of end cones of Bugga and Traveller from the Sanguine Gryphon (which was split into Cephalopod Yarns and the Verdant Gryphon). They run about 250 yds of fingering weight so I could try matchy matchy skeins. Or not.

Anyway, that's all I have for you today :)

Oh, I've since caked the Knit Picks and it might be a self-stripe of some sort. We'll see when I get around to knitting it.

Adventures in Yarn Dyeing: The First Time!

I don't know how may of you remember, but at Stitches West, I took a yarn dyeing class with Jennifer Vancalcar of Holiday Yarns.

This was my masterpiece:

After class, I tottered off to Jennifer's booth and picked up the dye kit for Strandwanderer. Included in the kit were two bare skeins of her FlockSock base, four different basic dyes (ruby red, sun yellow, royal blue, and black), the Strandwanderer pattern, and directions for how to dye yarn for that project. Now, I'll be honest here: Strandwanderer is a lovely pattern but it's just not something I'm going to knit. What I wanted was the dye kit part.

So, that was the end of February. It's now the beginning of April. Over the last six or seven weeks since Stitches West, I've been accumulating items for dyeing. I know, that sounds kind of weird. I mean, I had the dye, I had the yarn...what else could I possibly need?

Turns out that you need quite a few things, but none of them are hugely expensive or difficult to find. It also depends on what kind of dyeing you plan to do. I was perfectly fine doing a form of splatter/speckle dyeing, which is what we did in class. You can achieve the same goal as immersion dyeing (where you stick the entire skein or half a skein in a dye pot and just let it soak it up) but without having things sit in a pot. A few things we had on hand for the project but there were some things that I needed to get.

What I had:
1. Dye
2. Yarn (I had some in my stash that I could use, as well)
3. Plastic bags
4. Saran wrap
5. Hot water
6. Paper towels
7. Shammy (specifically, I had a ShamWow that I cut in half for this project)
8. 5-gal bucket (Home Depot kind)
9. Vinegar or citric acid powder (you can buy the citric acid powder in bulk from a beer supply shop)


What I needed:
1. 2-cup measuring cup (preferably plastic)
2. Small amount measuring spoons (drop, smidgen, pinch, dash, tad)
3. Squeeze bottles
4. Veggie steamer
5. Funnel (helpful but not necessarily a "need" for this)
6. Mason jars (for storage of unused dye)
7. Spoon (metal, plastic, whatever...)
8. Dust mask (especially helpful if you're doing a lot of dye mixing)

Unfortunately, I had difficulty finding a few of these items. I had to order, the measuring cup, measuring spoons, and the funnel (which still hasn't arrived). I could have just bought any funnel but I didn't want to pay $9 for something I might not ever use except this one time. I also didn't want to go out and buy a brand new veggie steamer (they run about $25 new for a basic one, which is all I needed). I took Jennifer's suggestion and trolled Goodwill and St. Vinny's. I found one at Goodwill that would have been great if it had the steamer portion but, alas, it did not. Good thing because I found the perfect one at St. Vinny's (along with my metal spoon). It's an older Oster steamer, double layer so it has two steamer baskets stacked one on top of the other. And I didn't feel bad for paying $15 for it because it was used and I didn't know if I was going to like this adventure or not (hahahaha). I found the squeeze bottles at one of the grocery stores and a few more at Michael's (truth be told, the ones from Michael's kind of suck bozons so I might swing back over to the grocery store and buy more from there - those ones worked really well). I also found the mason jars and the dust masks at Target; I didn't necessarily want a dozen of the jars but that's what I wound up with. Oh well.

In addition to that, I bought a couple books about dyeing: Dyeing to Spin & Knit by Felicia Lo and Hand Dyeing Yarn and Fleece by Gail Callahan.

Soooooo, I had most of my items and I pulled the trigger (I was missing a few items like the funnel, the measuring cup, and the measuring spoons but I could get away with not having them for this first round....and I did.

I unhanked the two skeins of FlockSock, made sure they were tied well, and put them into the bucket, which had about 2 gallons of water and maybe a gallon of vinegar in it. Maybe not quite that much. I let those soak for a good half-hour, though many dyers will tell you to just soak them overnight. But, I'm impatient.

While those were soaking, I made my dyes. I was going to go for something blue, maybe something green, yellow, and I made black for fun. I wound up making a deep blue, a dark blue-green, a basic yellow, and black.

L to R: yellow, blue, blue-green, black

I had an awful time getting the saran wrap to lay flat on my surface. It kept trying to stick to me. I eventually got enough down to be able to work. I laid out my first skein of yarn, fluffed it out a bit so I could get at the yarn better, and got myself ready to go.

My first skein I did with the blue and the blue-green. I also striped some of the black in for fun. It actually didn't take me that long to do, once I got going. The hardest part was flipping it over to work on the opposite side. I used the shammy to clean up the spills and I used it on top after I had finished dyeing, to soak up more of the excess. 

I laid that one aside and set up for the second skein. I had no idea what I wanted to do with it. I had used up all the blue on the first skein and most of the blue-green. I had plenty of yellow, and probably half of the black. 

I started with the black on this one. I put the yellow in between the black stripes. It was playing right into my Hufflepuff nature but, alas, it didn't stay that way. When I had my class at Stitches, Jennifer mentioned that the black mixed with the yellow would most likely give an avocado green color where they meet. I was not fussed about that. I like green. I also put the remaining blue-green dye in there, as well.

I dipped both skeins in the bucket of vinegar/water (multiple times). I did the second one first because it had the lighter colors. Mostly the black sloughed off, though there was some green in there, too. Then I dipped the first skein several times. That water was good and black when I was finished with that step. 

Then, I folded up my yarn into saran wrap and stuck them in the steamer for an hour. I flipped them at the half-hour mark, just in case. 

I probably should not have done this in the kitchen. It made the house smell like vinegar and wool. The wool part I didn't mind but vinegar....I might have to go with citric acid. That smell is pretty nasty. 

An hour later, I pulled yarn out, let it cool a little (again, impatient), gave them both a swim in the sink, found no dye leakage, and called it good!

There were a few spots that were lighter, but that just adds to it's hand dyed nature.

This one has a lot going on and I'm okay with that. The black faded a bit but I'm not fussed about that, either.

These have both been skeined up and are hanging out in my stash. I'm not sure what they want to be when they grow up but for now, they look pretty.

Now, as expected, I very much enjoyed dyeing yarn. So, there's going to be a second installment as soon as I get photographs taken of finished yarn....which can't happen until the yarn is fully dried. In other words, I'll probably have another post like this one. 

I probably shouldn't tell you that I've been trolling the Dharma Trading website in search of more dye...and dyeable yarn. Or that I've been trolling Etsy looking for sock blanks, preferably double-strand. Nope. Haven't been doing that.

Anyway, I hope you're having a lovely day :)