Heather Knits

I realised that I hadn’t shown you my first attempt at spinning sock yarn yet. I actually spun this before the red BFL. This is superwash bluefaced leicester again, dyed in the fibre, in a progression of colours, rather than a random mixture. I am hoping that as the yarn is knitted the colours will gradually shade from green through turquoise to purple. We shall see how successful this is!

There is 75g in each skein, and about 340m altogether. It measures about 13 wpi and so is somewhere between a 4ply weight and a DK weight.

I spun the lower skein first, and I think I got a bit over-keen with the plying of the second as it is plyed quite a lot tighter than the first. I’m not sure yet how much this will affect the finished socks. They may end up coming out slightly different sizes. I will just have to remember to wear the bigger sock on my bigger foot

On Monday last week I had another play with the dyes to see if I could make another pale orange and another mid orange for my Autumn in Anatolia jumper. While I was at it I also had another go at a green for the foreground.

These were the three colours I dyed. I am having a lot of trouble photographing them accurately, but this is fairly close.

The mid orange is good I think. I am a little concerned that the palest orange is actually nigh-on indistinguishable from yellow. The green is a beautiful colour, but I think still too blue.

Here is the new pale orange with the other colours it will be with in the sequence (the new colour is in the middle).

And here are the mid oranges. Again the new colour is in the middle.

Here is the new green on the right along with the last green I attempted on the left, which is 400ml of 1% stock solution of Kemtex acid dye in green, and which as you can see is a very bluey green. Then at the bottom is Jacquard Emerald Green, which is a lovely colour, but I had trouble with it being a bit blotchy. The Kemtex does dye very evenly and exhausts very well (which is very satisfying ). The new green is 300ml of green and 100ml of yellow. For my next trick I think I shall try 200ml of green and 200ml of yellow.

Just for fun, here is the sequence of colours laid out on our dining table. As you can tell we don’t eat on the table often

I think I shall have another go at dyeing a pale orange since I think that step is still a bit big. I think the mid orange is ok, and I shall try to get a slightly yellower green.

While I had the dyes out I had a go at semi-solid dyeing my Dorset/BFL sock yarn I spun during the Tour de Fleece. I did this using a variation on the dyeing in a bag method Fiona showed us at her workshop. Her method was a cold dyeing method, but it adapted easily enough for hot dyeing. Boil in the bag yarn! I put the dye and the yarn in the bag and squished around, then left for about an hour and then steamed it as usual.

There was 250g altogether of yarn which I think was a bit much for my bag. I couldn’t mash the yarn round as much as I would like, so some of the skeins are more evenly dyed than others. The two smaller skeins dyed much more evenly, with the biggest skein being the most mottled. I like the effect though.

It was also interesting to see how the Dorset took the dye in comparison to the BFL. As you can see from this picture, the Dorset has taken the dye a bit (both the grey and the white) but not nearly as strongly as the BFL.

I am looking forward to knitting this up and seeing how it comes out.

Back at the beginning of June I went on a dyeing workshop with Fiona Morris.

The first three samples are mini-skeins of 4ply superwash bluefaced leicester. They are all dyed in a pot on the stove, you sprinkle the dye powder in as the mood takes you but don’t stir while it cooks, creating a (totally unrepeatable) multicolour effect.

It was fun to do, but my control freak personality doesn’t really gel with this method It is quite hard to predict how the colours are going to come out, and in fact they often change as the yarn cooks and more dye is absorbed.

Next I had a go at dyeing with fibre reactive dyes. These are the kind of dyes you use for plant fibres, and you use a cold dyeing method.

First some cotton dyed as a semi-solid in a plastic bag. You just measure out your dye, bung it in the bag, stick the yarn in on top, squish around for about 10 mins or until you have had enough, then leave it for half an hour.

It came out rather paler than I was expecting. The fibre reactive dyes don’t seem to exhaust as well as the acid dyes. I found it rather worrying how much dye ran out as I was rinsing.

Finally, using the fibre reactive dyes again, this was dyed in a tray, pouring the dye on and then leaving it. I was surprised at how well this one took the dyes. The yarn is 50% merino, 50% tencel, so I was expecting it to come out a lot paler as the merino wont take the fibre reactive dyes as strongly as the tencel.

A fun day.  I enjoyed trying some different techniques, and being able to play with the fibre reactive dyes without buying a whole load of colours myself. I haven’t worked out what these are all going to become but I’m sure I will think of something soon

With all the excitement about Le Tour de Fleece I failed to blog about some yarn I finished shortly before the tour started.

This is some superwash Bluefaced Leicester dyed in the fibre by me. I used the left overs in shades of red and brown from the dyeing day at Ash.

I like how it has come out, mostly red,  but with little bits of brown and a variety of shades of red. There is 232m and 100g and it is about a 4ply ish weight, bits of it are a bit thicker It is going to become part of my handspun waistcoat which at the moment exists only in my head.

The cyclists did their biggest climb so far this tour, into Andorra, and I have crested my own little summit with my spinning.

I have finished my first full  bobbin of the tour. Yes, the grey Dorset is finally finished! Only two bobbins of the white to go and then I can ply it and see what it will be like as yarn.

In honour of the occaision I have been playing at making mosaics with Picasa 3. So here is a recap of my progress on this yarn on the tour.

And another, because if a thing is worth doing, it is worth overdoing.

I ran my foot over with our side gate shortly after taking these photos while having a quick tidy up outside. It is a nice substantial gate. I am hopping around now (well not right now, since even with the laptop I can’t type and hop at the same time). I shall go and bathe it and anoint it in a minute.

I have been managing to do a spot of knitting in between all the spinning. I have finally finished my latest test sample for my current City and Guilds project. I was test driving how the colours work, and also testing 6 possible patterns, of which I will probably use 3. This is the project I have been dyeing all the colours for.

This is it in its unblocked, straight off the needles state.

These are the most likely 3 patterns.

And these are the three probably rejects.

As you can see the edging at the bottom edge is too loose. I think the top edge is better but now probably a bit tight. I am reserving final judgement until after it has been washed. The top edging is worked on smaller needles, which I think works well, but I think I decreased too many stitches.

I also think I need to introduce another couple of intermediate colours. Another medium orange about half way up to ease the transition from red to orange, and a very pale orange just before the yellow. It is coming along though, and I am looking forward to being able to measure the tension after it has been washed and start plotting out the final design.

There has been lots of dyeing going on round here lately, although not all of it by me. At the March meeting of the Ash knitting group we had a dyeing workshop. Janine led the demonstration of dyeing with Kool Aid, Lisa on dyeing with food colouring (she uses icing dyes) and I did acid dyes.

We set up three big tables in the hall, one for each type of dyeing and Janine made up lots of mini skeins of Wensleydale wool. People started off at the table of their choice, then after finishing one skein, moved around to one of the other tables to try the other sorts of dyeing. I think everyone got a chance to try out each of the types of dyeing if they wanted to, and several people managed multiple skeins.

Here is everyone hard at work. We are very fortunate with the Victoria Halls in Ash since it is a nice big room with plenty of space to get between the tables, and the lighting isn’t bad.

And here is my table of acid dyers. I mixed up all the solutions before the workshop to simplify things a bit. Plastic milk bottles make great containers for dye solutions and you can write on them with marker pen so you don’t forget what is inside

I loved seeing everyone’s different colour choices and methods of application. What a lot of fantastically creative people we are lucky to have come to the group. Here are some of the skeins drying.

I am looking forward to seeing what everyone makes with their yarns, and hopefully we have given people a little taster of different types of dyeing.

About a month ago I had my first proper go at dyeing fibre. I had dyed a small amount last summer at a workshop, and I managed to accidentally felt a bit so this time I decided it would be safer to try some superwash fibre.

My plan was to dye fibre that I planned to spin into yarn for socks. I started off with superwash Bluefaced Leicester tops. It is nice and soft and I find it not too difficult to spin. I thought the superwash treatment would make for good easy care socks, and also minimise the likelihood of me accidentally felting it while dyeing

I dyed up 150g of fibre to be on the safe side, especially since my spinning is not that fine yet and so it would probably come out as quite thick sock yarn. I planned to spin a 3 ply yarn, so first split my tops in half, one for each sock. Then split each of these into three, one for each ply. I lined them all up together, then dyed them in sections from one end to the other.

I have started the spinning and have completed the first skein and am part way through spinning the singles for the second. Unfortnately I got a bit tired and impatient with the first skein and made a bit of a pigs ear of the plying, but over all its not bad for an idiot

It is thicker than a commercial 4ply but thinner than DK and is fairly uniform (oh the wonders of 3ply). I am hoping that the second skein will be better without being too different to the first so that my finished socks will at least look related. This is all so much fun!

I actually finished the knitting for this back at Christmas, but it has taken ages for me to find buttons I liked. Finally Mummy found some good ones so here is the finished jacket.

I love it, and hope that the new parents-to-be will too, and that it will fit ok. There is still another month to go, but I will be seeing them this week so will ask them whether they would like it now or after the kiddie is born.

As a recap the yarn is 4ply weight, 80% superwash merino, 20% bamboo, dyed by me with Jacquard acid dyes.

I love this pattern so much I have already started doing tension swatches for an adult-sized one for me.

I actually finished these over Christmas but have been very slow at taking photographs.

When I finished the knitting part of the Baby Surprise Jacket (I still need to find some buttons, so it doesn’t count as properly finished yet), I had nearly a whole ball of yarn left and thought it would be rather nice to have matching booties.

The pattern is Multicoloured Sockies by Maude Smith from Socks Socks Socks: 70 Winning Patterns from Knitters Magazine, but I tinkered with the pattern a little. My yarn was thinner than that specified in the pattern so after a trial run which ended up as a Christmas tree ornament, I decided to cast on 12 sts and work 22 garter ridges for the sole, using 2.5mm needles.

I also didn’t work the holes for the drawstring, and decided to go straight into 2×2 rib for the leg. Hopefully this will make a good practical cross between a shoe and a sock, which will be easy to get on. They are so cute!

Like the rest of the UK we have had unaccustomed snowiness over the last few days. It started on Sunday night:

and by Monday looked like this:

This is definitely the most snow we have seen here since we moved in. Paul’s work had emailed and told everyone to work from home unless it was critical that they made it into the office so we put on our warm clothes and stayed indoors. At lunch time we went for a walk around the village to assess the situation.

The station was closed:

But there was some surprisingly industrious snow enginnering going on. Unfortunately I failed to photograph the large igloo in progress on the village green, but did photograph the snowman on the common (for reference Paul is about 6 feet tall – that is one tall snowman! Click the picture for the full effect).

It was very beautiful but a bit cold, so after a circuit of part of the common we came home and dried off and had hot chocolate

The snow is definitely on its way out now although I am surprised by how well it has lasted.

And now to justify the knitting blog part – well not actually knitting, but ingredients for knitting at least. I mentioned that I had been doing some more dyeing while my parents were visiting. Here are my latest efforts. They are for some more experimenting for my next City and Guilds project, which is coming along, although slowly.

I am very pleased with the oranges, they have come out pretty much as I planned. The green was a bit of an experiment. This is the first time I have had a go with Kemtex acid dyes, and this is their green. It is quite a bit bluer than I was expecting, and too blue for this project, though it is a lovely colour. I have also been playing with the acidity again (me, obsessive, heaven forbid!), and I made the solution for the green a little more acid than my last experiments. One of the reasons for this was the discovery that if you make up dye solutions and then leave them for 3 months, the less acidic ones go a bit mouldy (although they do still dye the yarn fine). However since the acid fixes the dye to the yarn, and the stronger the acid the faster the fixing (this means that the colours don’t run as far), in this case the colour has hardly had a chance to get onto the yarn before it is being fixed to it, resulting in the inside of the yarn if you unply it being considerably paler than the outside. It is an interesting effect, and makes the yarn look slightly heathered which is pretty, but I think I will reduce the acid next time and aim for a more solid colour.