I had two things that I wanted to get done yesterday. One project was to dye up a pound of handspun yarn that I found in a bin upstairs. I woke up thinking about it – that’s scary. I had six skeins and ended up dyeing five colors. The purple and lilac were Gaywool dyes in Hibiscus and Mulberry and the rest were hybrids that I couldn’t possibly reproduce. The gold is simply school bus yellow dye stock that Amy left here with a glug of black to sadden it. I’m still undecided on whether to purchase more Gaywool dyes or Landscape dyes. They’re both products of
These are ready to be knitted into hats. I was out of hat yarn so am glad to replenish my supply.After my foot surgery on Wednesday, I’m not going to be mobile for a while. Anticipating that, I decided to get knitting projects together and evaluated my stash and patterns until I had three projects. One project will be from the Blue Sky Organic Cotton which I bought from Amy. It didn’t work for the baby sweater for which I had bought it, but after seeing the Jimmy Beans buttons and putting one together with one of Diane Soucy’s vest patterns, I had one project down. The second one was harder. The yarn is a worsted weight, rag wool from Bartlett Yarns that I bought when Diane was still running the wool room at the Truckee Variety Store – oh, about 15 years ago. It’s dingy and not all that interesting, but it takes up a ton of space in the studio. I made a pattern from Sweater Wizard and melded it with one from Vogue. Two down. Should it need a third, I made a side-to-side pattern from Sweater Wizard to knit from superwash Merino, in my stash that I bought from Diane’s stash – oh, 15 years ago. That’s three. And of course, there’s that box of one-balls of Shetland jumper weight that I bought from Allison's stash in a moment of temporary insanity. I found a pattern for it today while I was at work. So no spinning, just lots and lots of knitting – and books.
2 comments:
What gorgeous colors. I wouldn't have thought to use those colors together but they really work well. Thanks for mentioning the dash of black. I'd forgotten about that.
I like to use Lanaset dyes. Since I don't usually worry about the color being absolutely even, I omit all of the auxiliary chemicals and just add acid so that the dye bath is about 4.5 to 5. They exhaust totally as long as your pH is OK -- just leaving clear water to dump or reuse. Their color fastness is great, better, I am told than Gaywool or Landscape. Also, I can mix up a stock solution and not use it for several years and have it be perfectly OK when I do decide to dye with it.
Good luck with the foot surgery. I suppose it wouldn't be appropriate to say "break a leg" would it:-)
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