Which-Crafts?

I know I have mentioned this to a few people in person, but I haven’t gotten around to mentioning this here.  Helen, Maria and I had a little run in with insanity last month. There is a really long and fairly amusing story  - but the long and short of it is that we are running a KAL (Knit-along.) It is a Lace knit along, not based around a specific pattern, just based around knitting lace for the summer.

We got started organizing it a little over a month ago, and already we have a pile of sponsors and prizes (Helen has done an awesome job procuring these for us.)  We have a Ravelry group and a Blog and I am pretty excited about how it is all coming together. Its called Seasons of Lace - and if you are interested you are welcome to join us!

Even though I am Mod there, I am really quite the lace newbie. I have 2 lace projects on the needles right now. One of them I am doing in my own made up pattern - but I am not very far along on that one. This one is someone else’s pattern and is the one that i am working on primarily.

This is the Strangling Vine Lace Scarf. I got off to a rocky start, there is a bit of a discrepancy between the written pattern, and the chart. But once I worked it all out and put some stitch markers in everything smoothed right out.

I am knitting it in Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool - which I love love love! I bought this yarn to be Aibhlinn, but after I started knitting, it really was just about the most boring thing ever - and you needed to pay just enough attention to it that it wasn’t even “mindless” knitting. So Riiiiip! Its been a few thing in between, but now its found its happy match.

So I snagged the bosses camera (an EOS!!! - now I am totally spoiled) and took some pics of my recent playing with hand-dyeing. I was a bit in a rush so haven’t edited the pictures much, but the colors are pretty accurate as is. For all of these there are more pics on the tab labeled Hand Dyeing at the top of the page.

[singlepic=41,320,240,left] The first pic here is of one of the 2 skeins of Knit Picks Bare sock weight merino/tencel yarn I dyed this way. It is incredibly squishy and feels great. At the risk of sounding conceited, I am very pleased and a bit surprised at how the colors turned out. Right now I am not hand-painting the yarns, but using my own version of kettle-dyeing. The results are turning out very cool, and not at all regular and stripey which is exactly what I want. I have 1 skein from the earliest dye batches (my test skein) that I am currently knitting into mittens. It ends up knitting up with a sort of watery heathery affect. I hope to get these in front of the camera soon.

The next two pictures are of over-dyed skeins. This one was the last one I dyed from the holiday batch and really - I think [singlepic=44,320,240,right] my inspiration had sort of temporarily burned out. There were two skeins of a merino-silk blend that ended up sort of this sad sickly pink with dullish purple splotches. So I decided that seeing as they were already sort of miserable, I would use them as my test skeins for trying out the warping board. I reskeined them in these big long skeins and then over dyed them. I do have to admit that once I reskeined them and then soaked them to prep them for dyeing, they looked very pretty - all sorts of multilayerd grapey colors that just didn’t show up when dry. So they got over dyed, and I tried very very hard for a nice multilayered color spread - but mostly ended up with 2 colors. I am not sure I am able to create the same color subtlety over-dyeing that I can when I start bare.

[singlepic=40,320,240,left] This yarn was a fabulous freebie give-away yarn and has a whole long story behind it. But mostly for our purposes here, the important part was that it was ugly. Inho REALLY ugly. Sort of a dull, pastel, but still olive and not sage green. It is 100% Alpaca and wonderfully soft. And I didn’t want to let it go to waste, so I took it and knew that someday I would over-dye it. I was a little paranoid dyeing it, because a lot of what i dye is Superwash and I don’t have to be too careful about it felting. I KNOW this yarn felts and so I had to be v.v. careful to prevent ending up with a beautifully dyed lump of useless fiber. Once again I didn’t quite get the color depth that I wanted. But it is still about 500% better than it was when it started, and now I am trying to dream up what I can do with 1lb of DK weight 100% Dark green alpaca.

this is one of those times i REALLY wish I had a camera - so i could show you some of the awesomeness that I created this weekend.

Over the holidays I dyed some yarn for gifts, and got a really good response. This has been the first weekend since then that I really had time to play again.

A few weeks ago, I was talking about some of my future dyeing plans to a friend of mine. I was waxing rhapsodic about all the ways I could experiment once I made myself a warping board type thing to wind yarn on.

“You know i have a warping board in the basement? Right?”

“Huh?” (I am very cogent when surprised )

“Ya know, from when I used to weave. Do you want it?”

“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I spent some time this week reading up on warping boards (there isn’t a lot of info out there) and then went to town. Up until now skeining yarn has been a bit of a pain. Winding on to my umbrella swift hasn’t been thrilling me - it is ungainly and my inner mechanical engineer (who is a 2nd grader) can tell that it is wildly inefficient. The warping board, while having its own amount of inefficiencies, is WAY better and much easier to use. As far as I am concerned it is a total win.

I had 2 skeins of KnitPicks Bare merino/silk fingering yarn that I had dyed at the end of my holiday dyeing and had ended up a drab pink and dull purple. They got reskeined and over dyed. They are now still pink and purple, but now its more of a deeper purple with some pink glowing out of it. It still isn’t my favorite, but my roommate, is trying to steal it while my back is turned.

I had 2 skeins of KnitPicks merino/tencel sock yarn - they are now a fiery blend of light golden yellows, deep oranges, and burnt chestnut.

7 skeins of puke light olive Plymouth Baby Alpaca DK got completely re-skeined and over dyed. They are now drip drying in the bathroom, I am hoping that they are a a dark green/teal with light green overtones when dry. This was my first attempt to make 2 separate pots of yarn turn out the same, when they are dry I’ll be able to judge better - but I think I did a pretty good job.

The short recap - not suprisingly there was yarn, and knitting, and a cubic butload of fun. I bought beautiful stuff, learned a lot, and touched more yarn than I could ever possibly afford (hmmmmm quiviut, hmmmm cashmere). And while apparently I had a fetish for fuzzy stuff like angora and mohair this year - I didn’t end up buying any. Maybe I’ll just have to learn how to spin it.

The longer recap with some whining and complaining, but in general goodness and Yarn Pr0n to be had behind the cut  . . .

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It is my understanding that the yarn companies are going through a bit of a renaissance due to the massive increase in the quantity of knitters out there. From what I understand they have increased the both the variety and quality of what is available by a noticeable amount. This is certainly something I can get behind.

OTOH this renaissance (combined with the internet) has also allowed quite a few smaller more artisan spinning and dyeing companies to flourish. Today while contemplating the yarn I might purchase for an upcoming project, I was wondering how purchases of either kind might affect the market and supply.

In general (for me) supporting smaller, more local businesses is a no-brainer. The BNBrands have some v.nice yarn, and I am certainly not implying that I’d never buy from them, but I am wondering how much of an impact the artisan yarn movement has on the BNBrands and what they choose to create and sell.

I have definitely had the crafty horn of plenty visit for the last 2 weekends. I feel very full up of crafty-goodness, and still very inspired to keep going.

Weekend before last, S. and A. and I took off for the wilds of Marengo, IL. to visit The Fold. Toni who owns The Fold has created an excellent store chock-full of all of those things fibery folks like most. Our “purpose” for driving out there was to let A. play with as many spinning wheels as possible for research. This was theoretically a research trip not a “purchasing” trip. S. and I were along for the ride as encouragement and enablers. Plus I am never going to turn down a trip to The Fold (just too many things to touch, covet, and dream about). Actually I had emailed a bit with Toni and she was going to give my sample 4ply a look-see and give me some spinning advice.

When we got there the store was a mad-house, we got comfortable poking around the store looking for just the perfect yarn for S.’s upcoming baby blanket project. A. also started ogling the fiber, she has some very specific projects in mind, and we were looking for just the right stuff for the projects. Once the store cleared out we started putting wheels in front of A. I am pretty sure she tried almost every one in the store, while having a good run at the fiber selection, trying out all kinds of different kinds soft fluff. She clearly felt right at home on the ashford traveler, and had a few that were far from fun. As the day wended on, S. and I just sat down with our knitting and we ended up in kind of a little craft klatch, knitting, spinning, chatting and snacking. Toni approved of my 4ply and didn’t have any suggestions, which made me feel pretty good. And when all was said and done, A. couldn’t leave the little ashford traveler at the store, and so she took it home with her.

The here is some yarn pr0n of my 4ply which I spun up from my hand-dyed fiber :

Single Strand

Swatch made with yarn