I rewound a skein of bare Hawthorne yarn from KnitPicks so that the colors I had planned would have more 'room'; this antique weasel winds a longer skein than my newer one.
Once I had dipped the yarn into the dye in the repeat pattern I liked, I baked them in the oven to set the color.
Once it dried, I have a very pretty skein of blue, grey and black yarn!
I see a good knit ahead!
Dyeing sock blanks has really gotten fancy-just check out YouTube or Pintrest to see what I mean!
I had a blank in the stash so I got that out to play with also.
(a sock blank is a commercially knitted skein that is sold for the express purpose of dyeing so you can rip it out and knit it back into whatever you want. It is a gem to dyer/knitters!)
I used the same three colors I had made and made a zig zag pattern and then baked it to set the colors also.
This is the sock blank! I folded it in half so that both ends were the same so I can get two socks out of it.
The thing is, everyone is making these elaborate blanks but I haven't seen one pair of socks from them!
I am curious to see what you get when you do all that work!
So I unraveled the blank as I wound it onto the ball winder and now I have a very complexly colored cake of yarn just demanding to be knitted. I couldn't wait! I cast right on and I can't wait to show you what it looks like!
Soon....
Since I still had some dye left, I stuffed four ounces of Cormo roving into the jars and mircrowaved them to set the color. You can see the water become clear as the wool absorbed all the dye in the liquid. Pretty cool.
When it really cools, I pour the roving out, rinse well and let it dry in the sunshine.
(It doesn't take long because it is still scorching hot out!)
I broke the roving into smaller sections of colors and then put them in two sets of patterns and then wrote it down in case any cats mess up the order and then I spun half today for my 'mileage' for the TDF.
Tomorrow I will spin the other two ounces and then ply them on Thursday.
Then we will see if my plan works out!
Altogether, it was a good day to dye!
I can't wait to see how those socks turn out! What a cool concept!
ReplyDeleteI love the experiments you are doing! If you want to see some of the fancy sock blanks knitted up, you need to watch Andre Sue Knits' podcast. She does really fancy ones and she's knitting them up, too!! Besides, she's just a wonderfully sweet person and lovely to "visit."
ReplyDeleteyour zig zag pattern came out amazing!
ReplyDeleteThose are some beautiful colorways you came up with. I've dyed and knit several sock blanks and they are always fun. They never turn out the way you think they will and that's the fun part. Daddio dyed my last one. They are some very interesting socks!
ReplyDeleteThis is soo cool! I love seeing the different shots of various project phases. Beautiful.
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