Food dyes and yarn

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at dyeing yarn for a quite a few years, but have never until now taken that extra step to actually doing it. Eskimimi’s blog post about her gorgeous colourful hand-dyed yarns gave me that little shove to give it a bash myself.

Armed with some Rutland Tweed Morcott, food colouring and vinegar, here what I’ve come up with so far…

  

It’s not been a total success, but I’m pretty happy with what I’ve ended up with. The yellow was my second try (I forgot to take photos of my first!) and was meant to be a pinky peach. That clearly didn’t work! I now know that the natural food colourings are essentially useless for yarn dyeing purposes! The yellow is the only one that really has any effect. I actually quite like the yellow though.

Having realised this, I searched out some artificial cochineal from the kitchen cupboard and had another try which was a lot better, except that the dye was a pretty uneven! I swear I’ll have success at last :) The tweedy flecks in amongst the pinky red of this one make me think of strawberries and watermelon.

These are only 50g hanks, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them. I’m hopefully going to search out more dyes this weekend for some more dyeing experimentation. I’ve been rather fascinated by natural dyeing for some time now, so I’m definitely keen to give that go once I’m a bit more familiar with this malarkey!

Pin It

FO: Haruni

My knitting mojo has been somewhat lacking of late, but the needles have not been entirely idle.

Haruni by Emily Ross

Yarn: Regia Stretch Color
Ravelled here

I love this pattern, it’s beautiful.

This was my post-exam knitting treat. I’d wanted to knit it for quite a while, but thought it’d be quite a complex pattern so put it aside until my exams were finished and then went at it.

The pattern was surprisingly straight forward, I think it’s one that looks more complex than it actually is. The first pattern chart was quite easily memorised. I found the second chart a little trickier as it was quite hard to read the lace until I was several rows in, but it wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be. I finished it in 2 weeks, which I think is some kind of record for me!

I wasn’t too sure I’d made the right choice with the Regia Stretch yarn, which I predominantly chose because I love the colour. I mentioned how sproingy it was when I blogged about my Earl Grey socks, and whilst I was knitting Haruni I was little concerned about how that would work for a shawl/scarf. I needn’t have worried though, it blocked out perfectly! I used my new blocking set up for this, which I’ll blog about soon.

I love the leaf border and the crochet cast off the pattern uses. The only mods I made were to knit an extra repeat of the first chart for a slightly longer scarf, although I’d have liked to have seen how it would have turned out with another couple of repeats!

Just a quick shot to end on of me wearing it this morning in my Beavis/Cornholio pyjamas… I’m a class act all the way :)

Pin It

Apology and Totoro progress…

First of all, I have a big apology! I have no idea whether anyone reads this blog, or if anyone has been trying to leave comments, but I only just realised this morning that my comments box was completely messed up and that no one could write anything! I have now trawled through my code, and it should (hopefully!) be fixed! Fingers crossed, anyway. It was pretty good revision procrastination :)

Knitting has stalled slightly thanks to imminent exams, and because posts sans pictures are boring, I leave you with Snoopy, very happily modelling an incomplete Totoro hat :) It now has both i-cords and one ear though!

 

Pin It

Limping across the finish line!

Several weeks later and I’ve finally managed to limp across the Winter Ravelympics finish line with my Earl Grey Socks!

 

Earl Grey by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Yarn: Regia Stretch Color
Ravelled here

I made this pair for the Boy, and I haven’t managed to get a shot of him wearing them yet, so I’ll just have to make do with my foot making these socks look ill fitting! Hum ho.

Despite this taking me well over a month to complete, it is a really quick pattern. The cable designs are a fun. lovely little detail that breaks up the monotony of the stocking stitch nicely. I love knitting socks that have a clear repeatable pattern in them as it makes it so much easier to make them the same size – just count the repeats of the first one and repeat as many for the second! I may be alone here, but I’m weirdly paranoid about making socks odd lengths, and have been known to take to obsessively measuring the second sock only to have it still turn out a different length, so this works a treat for me.

I followed the pattern pretty much as written, with the only exception being the cast on – I used Eskimimi’s stretchy cast on for this. It’s a very simple concept, but most ingenious ideas do tend to be! The link takes you through to her instructions on her blog, but essentially you’re provisionally casting on the correct number of stitches, working a few rows in stocking stitch before switching to ribbing for a few rows, and then joining the live provisional stitches to your working stitches by knitting the two together. Phew! I think it sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is, although it is a little fiddly. It is crazy stretchy though, more so than long tail and it has the added bonus that it snaps right back into place and doesn’t stretch out, so it is a good technique to bear in mind if you’re knitting socks for someone and you’re not too sure of the leg size. The only negative I have to say about this, is that it did leave a little bit of a bump on the cuff of my sock, which I think you can just about make out in the photo, which was a result of the double thickness caused by this technique. The next time I try this cast on I’ll try either working the cast on fewer rows, or working it for the whole of the ribbed cuff, which should hopefully make the join a little less noticeable.

And as far as new projects go, I’ve cast on and am almost done with knitting a Totoro hat for my goddaughter! It’ll be the first in a whole series of them, as I want to make one for her big sister, and as soon as the Boy got wind of all this he demanded one too. More on that later!

I also started a new blog last night for my other huge obsession: beauty and make-up! I don’t know if anyone actually reads this blog, but if anyone does I assume they’d be knitters, and I wasn’t too sure how many knitters would appreciate being bombarded with posts about make-up so I’ve forged out another little internet space for myself right over here :)

Pin It

Spinning for spring

 

I seem to get more of an urge to spin in the spring when the skies are lightening and the weather gets slightly warmer.  I’ve even been outside twice this week without a coat on! It really must be getting warmer.

Back in June, the Boy took me up to Glasgow for long weekend, and I persuaded him to take us to New Lanark since it was only around the proverbial corner.

 

It’s a precious little place which  I wholeheartedly recommend anyone to visit if they find themselves in that area. I absolutely love the history of it, and after wandering around the museum and seeing the gorgeous plants and views from their roof garden, of course I ended up in the gift shop. And of course I bought several balls of wool. Several might be around thirty. Eeek! And then, in the corner, I spied some large bags of emerald green fibre which I pounced on and added to my loot. Because when you’re buying several balls of wool, what’s one more bag?!

The other night, in a fit of procrastination, I felt the need to dig out my hand carders and have a play. The New Lanark fibre (I wish I’d had the foresight to ask what kind of fibre it was at the time) seemed the perfect choice for carding, since the rest of my fibre stash are combed tops and this was more of a lofty  mass.

The carding went a bit easier than I thought it’d be. It’s still a little tricky, but I guess practice will take care of that. I’ve decided to give woollen spinning a try, since I usually spin worsted. It’s supposed to give you a soft fuzzy yarn, since you’re spinning across the fibre rather than with the fibre, but so far all I’m getting is uneven singles! Let’s see if I manage any improvement.

Pin It