dyeing for spring break!

What do knitters do when they want instant gratification? No doubt the answer varies. For the confirmed fiberphile, it's hard to get much more instant than dye. Take some plain yarn and a bit of coloring agent

and a few hours and many gallons of water later, you can have this!

(I swear on my favorite set of dpns I did not read Claudia's blog before undertaking this project. Must be something in the NE springtime air!) That was Monday's entertainment. It was so much fun, I decided to repeat the exercise on Tuesday with a different color and different yarns.

The yarns are from my stash: two wool two-plies, approximately 2/20, one in white and one in bright yellow, and one skein of a tweedy taupy shetland. I love sticking different yarns into the dyepot, they take up color differently so you get extra entertainment from one bath. Because that was so much fun, and because I had wound a few extra skeins on my nifty skein winder (designed and built by me)

I decided to do another batch of dyeing on Thursday. At the last minute I threw in some extra skeins found in stash: one white laceweight, one lavender laceweight. The lavender came as part of a shawl kit, and while lavender is a fine color in the abstract, it does not fit into my wardrobe and I knew I would never like it enough to sit and knit a whole shawl with it. Before dyeing the yarns looked as if they were part of an Easter basket.

I was hoping for pastel shades, but when the moment came I found myself seduced once again by saturation, so I have more fuschia-pink yarn.

But that's ok; the lavender is at least knittable this way, the yellow turned out to be bright rollicking red, and the tweed turned into a lovely almost purply hue. Fair isle with the green from Tuesday? Maybe... now I have piles of newly colored yarns and for the time being I am enjoying seeing them in a bright heap. A few technical details:

This is my first time using Gaywool dyes. When I had a non-kitchen dyeing space, I did a lot of cold-water dyeing on plant fibers, and I enjoy the mixing and measuring and blending. For a while I got technical about it, with graduated cylinders, syringes, and a plethora of little jars and jugs. Now, alas, I don't have that kind of room so my dyeing is of the hmm let's see! rather than the replicable variety. Somewhere I picked up the vague feeling that dyes like Gaywool are a little like cheating--all the mordants and other chemicals are included, you just measure, dissolve and go. Certainly this doesn't allow as much control, but I just wanted easy color on wool, and I was pleased with the results. For one thing, the shades are truly saturated! Often a challenge on cotton.

Monday's batch: 5 skeins of KnitPicks color your own merino fingering. Gaywool dye "orchid", 3 capfuls (recommended is one capful per skein for full DOS, so you can see the colors are quite deep even without full saturation). If gauge is at all close, I'm planning to use this to make the scalloped jacket from Jean Frost's book "Jackets".
Tuesday: 2 skeins white wool laceweight, 2 skeins bright yellow laceweight, 1 skein taupe shetland. Three capfuls of Gaywool "lucerne". I love this color, but some caution is required when dissolving: the different color crystals seem to dissolve at different rates. I accidentally had some undissolved blue crystals, and as a result these skeins are a bit blotchy in places. The yellow turned out a bright deep green, the white a nice pale teal, the tweed a subdued greeny teal. The laceweights will likely either be woven, or used for shawls. I've been wanting to knit the La Traviata stole from the Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting for some time. The green may be just perfect.
Thursday: 1 skein bright yellow, 1 skein taupe shetland, 2 skeins white laceweight, 1 skein lavender laceweight. Gaywool "orchid", 2 1/2 capfuls. That was still too much for the colors I was aiming for, but luckily I like the result anyway. What was lavender is now fuschia with a purply hint. Likely it will be used for the original shawl pattern it came with, a Eugene Bugler design. The red will probably become a shawl too at some point. The shetland, well, I love the idea of a fair isle sweater, I'm just not sure I can make myself knit the whole thing. We'll see. I have several other colors in that weight, it would be fun to play around with shaded gradations.

Bright colors = happy me. Let's hear it for spring break!

Comments

[June]

Look at those bright colors! Everyone's longing for spring.

I like the skeinwinder - I remember talking with you about the big ones. Nice that you designed and built it yourself!!!

[Emily]

Nice colors! The first couple of batches definitely look like "Carrie colors", but the last batch surprised me a bit! Enjoy using them for something fun!

[diana]

I love the colors. Emily's right, you broke away from "Carrie colors" at the end. Yay to all bright colors and a happy spring!

[claudia]

I love Gaywool dyes. So easy! So colorful! Thanks for ridding the world of some Easter eggy yarn.