Today I broke away from my usual routine and decided to try my hand at dying sock yarn. My mother has been dying yarn for years but I never had any interest in it before. I only picked knitting back up in honest in 2005, and since then I’ve just been busy buying other people’s hand dyed yarn! The colors in the yarn from Maine that I mentioned in my last post inspired me so much I wanted to try it for myself.
You’ll have to forgive the filthy lawn chairs. They are used mainly for drying dyed yarn and wool, and are multicolor at this point. My first attempt is the skein on the left. I had wanted to try and make something fall-ish, so I started out painting a skein of yarn using yellow, orange, red, and purple. However, I quickly discovered that my colors were much too bright and the skein resembled something closer to psychedelic tie-dye than fall. At my mom’s suggestion, I dunked the entire skein in blue, and the result is what you see above.
skein #2
other side of skein #2
With the over-dying technique under my belt, I dove right into dying the second skein with a particular result in mind. I first dyed it using bright yellow, magenta, and red, and then again dunked it in blue. The second skein didn’t soak up nearly as much blue, but the number of colors I got afterwards was pretty interesting considering I had painted the skein with big bold sections of color. When it dried, it was a little lighter than I wanted, so I mixed up some more blue dye and gave the skein a second dunking in blue. The final result was fabulous! Unfortunately I don’t have a picture at the moment, but I’ll try to get one tomorrow in natural light (it’s currently hanging in my shower).
On the knitting front, I am working on some Embossed Leaves socks out of my copy of Favorite Socks from Interweave Knits. I am making it out of Cherry Tree Hill Supersock, out of an unknown colorway because I wound the yarn into a cake long ago and the ball band was forgotten. It is in lovely fall colors, and I am loving the way it’s turning out. I’ve been spoiled from knitting socks out of worsted weight though, and it seems like it’s taking forever!
On a final note, I caught this little guy enjoying the morning light as I was snapping pictures of my yarn.
Purl-de-lis 