Monday, January 8, 2018

Rust and Teal

Yesterday and today I spent hours experimenting with yarn dyeing. The color scheme was rust and teal and the technique - self-made sock blanks.


For the first blank I folded the strands into two and then again into four stranded cake. My new cake-winder was definitely very useful. Then I knitted the yarn into a simple garter stitch blank.


The color scheme I chose was teal and rust.
For the teal I mixed green and blue 1:1. This is where I faulted and should have been braver to correct it - my teal turned more green than blue and I should have dipped the green end into a little blue to accentuate the teal color, but I didn't, being afraid not to ruin it.
The rust was 8 orange + 2 red + 1 brown and it turned as I wanted it.


This is how the blank looked still wet after the dyeing - dip dyed on the stove:

I unraveled it and wound it on my niddy-noddy to dry. This was the dry yarn in the morning, four-stranded:

The yarn, separated into two-stranded yarn:

And finally separated into singles:

And wound into cakes ready to be knit with:

I wound the second ball of Alize Superwash into 8-stranded yarn and knit it into a garter stitch wider and shorter blank to be dyed in stripes. This is the color scheme I chose for the stripes:


In the evening, the process of dyeing. This time I hand painted the stripes and then nuked it into the microwave for 1:30 + 2 + 1 min.

The yarn cool and ready to be washed:

Dry and finally separated back into singles:
And the cakes.

Final thoughts: very labour consuming method, rather intense on the yarn. The dyeing of blanks produces interesting speckled effects because of the knitted texture of the blanks. However I am not likely to try it again soon, I believe I've satisfied my curiosity as far as this method of dyeing is concerned.

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