Dyeing – Hopefully Creative

Thin Stripes Sweater

Spiral striped sweater with a hint of yak.

I saw the # 18 Top down Pullover by Lana Grossa as free pattern on Ravelry and immediately fell in love. Too bad the free version was only in German and this pattern was quite difficult to understand. I became so obsessed with making it that I went online to find an English version of it and ended up paying for a whole stack of printed paper of all the patterns in the magazine it was published in. We’ll see if I make any more of the included items.

One dark gray skein, two gray skeins and two white skeins.

For the yarn, I dyed some MCN DK, a dk weight yarn with Merino, Nylon and Cashmere in a grey/brownish tint. I also used two more skeins of that yarn but undyed and two skeins of Tibetan DK, with Merino, Yak and Silk for the thin stripes and hems. I purchased the yarn bases way back, based on their listed gauge, before I even got hold of the English pattern. That’s how much I wanted it.

When I had my pattern and my yarn, I got to work. I believe I followed the instructions pretty faithfully up to the transition from dark to thin stripes. I messed up a little there but I think I managed to hide it pretty well. The pattern uses spiral stripes to get those thin stripes, which is such a cool technique. It did take me a bit to figure out how it worked though, so there are some increase errors in one of the raglan areas.

Thin Stripe Pullover neckline view on mannequin.

Thin Stripe Pullover dark gray to thin stripe transition.

I followed the pattern until separating the sleeves and even a bit further, put it on and thought it looked like a tent. So I frogged a whole bunch (also super interesting with spiral stripes) and separated for sleeves a lot sooner. I also didn’t add as many stitches in the underarm and I decided to continue the one raglan pattern p, k7, p down the body and the sleeves. I thought that was a fun little detail. Then it was on to a whole lot of stockinette knitting, three at a time. The separate balls of yarn were in the sweater which was held closed with safety pins. This worked really well.

Thin Stripe Pullover front view on mannequin.

Thin Stripe Pullover back view detail of white cross marking on mannequin.

For the bottom, I chose to do a 3×1 rib so I didn’t have to do a fold-over hem. I didn’t have enough yarn to make it in the same colour as the top, so I used the yak yarn for that. Seemed like a wiser choice than white cuffs, especially for such a klutz like I am. I did hours and hours of research on bind-offs, chose one, did it wrong and decided I liked it better than what it was supposed to be, so I left it. The final touch was hiding all the ends and stitching a little cross in the neckline to mark the back. I don’t own much brown clothing, but I do really like this thing. I hope it is as soft to wear as it is to touch!

Cowltopus

Joining a mystery knit along to make an octopus inspired “cowl”.

For the first time ever, I participated in a Mystery Knit-a-long (MKAL) last month. A KAL is a project where you get some part of the instructions and should complete those in a set time period. Mystery just means that you haven’t got a clue what the end result is going to be.

Sometime in September, I saw the announcement for the Cowltopus MKAL by Laura Nelkin, an MKAL that was to take place in October. It was on sale and it seemed like a fun idea, and I really like octopuses, so what could go wrong? Well, I forgot about it until about two days after the first clue came out and I hadn’t done any of the prep work. The prep included finding the right yarn and swatching it. I found the yarn I wanted to use, but it still needed to be dyed.

Glas octopus with yellow, retrieved https://www.oceanactionhub.org/octopus-species/

Glass octopus with orange and brown, retrieved https://octolab.tv/species/glass-octopus/

The pattern calls for DK weight yarn around 225 m/100 grams. There should be a main colour and a contrast colour, and both can be composed of mini skeins or just a single colour skein. There should be contrast between the MC and CC and gradients are encouraged. So I looked on the internet for different kinds of octopuses and settled on the quite elusive Glass Octopus Vitreledonella richardi. To match the inspiration, my MC was one full skein of Ultra DK in light blue. For the contrast, I chose to split a skein of Ultra DK into four section and dye them in a gradient from yellow to chestnut/brown.

Two skeins of yarn, left Contrast yarn from yellow outside to brown inside, right Main yarn in light blue

All skeins of yarn for the cowltopus. From left to right, yellow mini skein, orange mini skein, blue full skein, dark orange mini skein, brown mini skein

Once the yarn had dried, the gauge swatch got going. The swatch indicated that I had to size up my needles a little because I couldn’t get gauge otherwise. The first clue had come out on October 3rd, and was supposed to be done by the time clue 2 would be released a week later. I managed to get my yarn dyed and swatch ready by the 7th. On the 13th, I finished clue 1, to get right back on with clue 2.

Hood with yellow - orange gradient, end of clue 1 — Clue 1

Clue 2 went really smoothly and was actually finished on time, done by the 14th. This wasn’t super challenging yet, so I sailed right through it. The only new things were magic knots and needing to pay attention to the stitches. The third clue was where it got interesting. There were two options, brioche knit or ribbing. So I decided to learn something new and got going on the brioche. It wasn’t as scary as I was worried about. The instructions and video companion were very helpful and it all went according to plan.

Hood with yellow - orange - dark orange gradient, with brioche edge, end of clue 3 — Clue 3

Clue 4 was the last clue and where we were finishing the cowl – that turned out to be a hood. It was more brioche but now with waves in it. Actually quite fun to knit! The pattern is designed in a way that you shouldn’t run out of yarn unless you choose to ignore the instructions – my bad. I was supposed to start the end with 4 grams remaining, but I had 3.6 grams of yarn left. In the end, I had to tie in 15 cm of leftover yarn from the dying process to get the last few stitches finished.

Finished cowltopus with knitted octopus — Clue 4

Finished cowltopus, end of clue 4 — Clue 4

I enjoyed learning new things and not knowing exactly what was going to happen throughout the KAL. I’m not discounting doing one again even though the resulting hood isn’t totally my style. I’m very happy that one of my colours was solid, because the finished hoods from other knitters are overwhelmingly busy. I’ve not found much reason to wear it yet, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. Sometimes having a fun process is more important than having a good result.

Dye Fun!

Some more dye experiments – olive does weird things..

I recently got to spend a lovely afternoon with a colleague, playing with dye and bleach and trying some new things.

Detail of one skein of alpaca yarn dyed brilliant blue and periwinkle with gunmetal speckles on a black shale background

We mostly used Alpaca 4 ply yarn, and dye in three shades of blue (brilliant, royal and sky), periwinkle and gunmetal grey.

One skein of alpaca yarn dyed brilliant blue and periwinkle with gunmetal speckles

Turns out that if you put too much blue in, the variation gets lost. To get some variation back, we put some bleach over it, but it didn’t do all that much. Maybe my bleach was too old or it just doesn’t work. We decided to tried again with only brilliant blue, the periwinkle and some gunmetal speckles. A much more defined result.

One ball of alpaca yarn dyed brilliant blue and periwinkle with gunmetal speckles

One ball of upcycled quarter round dyed brilliant blue and periwinkle with gunmetal speckles

As a contrast to the blues with periwinkle, we also did a silver grey one. It’s always amazing to see how you end up with clear water after dumping in a bunch of dye.

One hank of alpaca yarn dyed silver gray hanging

One skein of alpaca yarn dyed silver gray

For some variety, we dumped some dye labeled ‘olive’ in the pan, and added two skeins of kid silk, and one alpaca 4ply. The yarn turned entirely green first before becoming orange-ish? It was as if it entirely split; super interesting to watch and I should’ve time-lapsed it, somehow.

Two hanks of kid silk lace yarn and one hank of alpaca yarn dyed olive hanging

Two hanks of kid silk lace yarn dyed olive hanging

One of the blue ones and the olive yarn stayed in my house while the rest went home with my colleague. It was a good afternoon and I do really love experimenting!

Roxy Blues!

All the blues in this sweater

Browsing Ravelry a while ago, I found a pattern that I really liked, called
Roxy Sweater by Lucienne Tricote. I even added it to my Queue on Ravelry, not an often used feature for me. To make it a reality, I needed a yarn that wasn’t too stripy, but I also didn’t want a solid colour sweater. So I decided to use multiple dyes to create a variation of shades of blue. The most accurate colour is in the final image of the post.

So I dyed some Gold Sport 300 yarn by putting four skeins into my chafing dish and adding different shades of blue over the top. I chose the Jacquard dyes 621-626, Sky Blue, Sapphire Blue, Brilliant Blue, Turquoise, Royal Blue and Navy Blue. Then I added a little 637 Gun Metal. The gun metal didn’t do much apart from somehow producing a few green spots? I decided not too care too much about that.

For the body, I cast on in twisted German cast on on size 3.75 needles, but this seemed tight. I knit the rib section and up to the row of eyelets. Then started the sleeves by casting on the stitches on size 4.5 needles (I think), this felt a lot better, much stretchier. Once the sleeves were done, I continued with the body until the point where the sleeves were supposed to be connected to the body. This was the single most boring knit I’ve ever done. I was so frustrated with the absolutely endless stockinette that I almost wanted to chuck it into a corner for a century. I did, however, persevere!

Once I had the body and sleeves at the right length, I decided that I hated the body cast on too much, so I cut it out. It was replaced by a much stretchier cast off. The body and sleeves were attached together and that marked the start for more interesting knitting, with the raglan sleeve decreases, the eyelet section and the garter stitch bit. I had to redo the neck section four times, too tight, too low, too stretchy, etc. I’m happy with what I ended up with though. The finished product is a little shorter than the pattern calls for, because I wanted to wear it with my dark dungarees. This is now my favourite outfit even if I will try to avoid endless stockinette handknitting with yarn this thin for a good long while.

Grey-diation Shawl

Adding some details to stave off endless repetition.

To be honest, I don’t remember much about this shawl. I finished it a couple of months ago and from what I can recall, the knitting was very boring. However, it does have good colours, grey, white and black go with everything! And I have worn it out a few times since, so lets try to recap anyway.

My Ravelry notes indicate that I started this new shawl on July 1st, 2023 and finished it on 11 October 2023. Not too bad of a turn around. The pattern is Aranea by Erika Wine and I later incorporated Asscher by Christina Danaee into it because I was so bored. The yarn was the ‘grey-diation‘ yarn dyed in December 2022. The pattern is fairly simple, the only thing to remember is to make the ‘spokes’ by effectively knitting i-cord along the edges and three other spines. In the beginning, a stitch is increased on each side of each spoke every fourth row. Once you pass 40 stitches between two spokes, you start increasing every other row.

This is a lot of knitting stockinette and for some reason, my yarn didn’t want to run out. The shawl is supposed to end when there were 80 stitches between the spokes, but I still had a lot left when I hit those 80 stitches. So at some point, I wanted something, anything else to do but knit-stitches for an eternity. I found the Asscher pattern, which has a pretty cool eyelet pattern on the back and started incorporating those instructions in between the spokes. I deviated at some point and made an extra triangle. I also needed to keep in mind that the i-cord binding still needed to happen, so I kept weighing the yarn to make sure I had enough. Once I reached the end, I followed the bind off instructions and wet blocked it.

Since I wanted the lace design to stand out a little more, I blocked it with straight edges instead of the spiderweb intention from the original pattern. This was probably not the best idea because what I liked most about the Aranea pattern was the spiderweb effect. However, I’m definitely not making this by hand ever again. I had to force myself to finish it. It has turned out a pretty decent size and it’s definitely wearable. I now also know how that gradation effect in yarn will play out when knitting. I have learnt (again) that endless stockinette is not my forte and will try to keep this in mind with future projects.

Argyle Vest

It caught my eye, I had to try, it’s now done, wearing will be fun.

Have you ever had the feeling that you had to make something after seeing an image of it? Well, I’ve had that feeling recently and this time it was due to a combination of slipped stitches and eyelets. I spotted the free pattern Argyle Sweater Vest by Kaitlin Barthold on Ravelry and it was love at first sight. Am I secretly eighty? Maybe. Do I care? No, that Argyle vest had to come live in my closet too.

So I first looked for some yarn. The pattern indicates that it’s originally made with a cotton bamboo DK yarn but that a good substitute would be a wool bamboo DK weight. I happened to have some of that in my undyed yarn hoard. I wanted to make a dark green vest, almost like the picture and I swear the yarn looked like that in the dye pot. However, once it dried, it was more.. grey-green-sea foamy than dark winter forest green. I decided that that was fine too. So I cast on.

I used this as a travel project, it went with me to Amsterdam, to the zoo and stayed in my house. I’d printed the instructions for the argyle pattern and meticulously referenced them throughout my travels (and while in my lazy chair). The pattern isn’t difficult, but it does require some counting and being able to read what you did the round before. Once I cast off the armholes, it became more like a guessing game of where to start the written pattern (I probably should’ve used the chart), but I think it all worked out well, argyle pattern wise.

There have been some modifications to create a more optimal fit. After 2.5 (instead of 3) repeats of the pattern, I started the armholes. I’m short, I didn’t want a dress. Then I also reduced the length of the armholes by 8 rows on front and back. The amount of ribbing rows in the neckline is different and I completely chucked the instructions for the armhole ribbing out of the window. It looked like you could drive a truck through those armholes before I redid them. So the second time around, I also took those in like the center front with a triple decrease.

Unfortunately, the weather turned bad before I really got a chance to wear it. As I am a lizard and it’s turned cold recently, I can’t just wear a button down without freezing. I’m currently debating whether I can make a button down / sweater to wear under this thing, but I haven’t figured it out yet. So for now, it lives on my dress form in the window, mesmerizing me from a distance. I do love argyle patterns so.

Froggy Hat

Frogs perching on lily pads make the best head gear.

I’ve been subscribed to Dot Pebbles a.k.a. Claire Garland’s newsletter for a few years now, and every so often I get a free pattern for a knit animal. These knits are always very life-like and look insanely complicated. I made the polar bear before and while it all worked out, I wasn’t sure it would while knitting it. So I’ve been eyeing the Frog pattern that’s been making the rounds on the internet recently. I thought I had received it a while ago in my free patterns too. Turns out that I indeed had and I really wanted to have a frog…

Since I really wasn’t sure if it was going to work, I tried to get similar yarns to the ones Claire Garland suggests. I got some drops kid-silk in my mailbox and dyed some fingering weight yarn in ‘toad-green’. The body and legs of the frog were going to be toad-green with apple-green kid-silk. It’s belly was undyed yarn with moonshine kid-silk.

Knitting the body is really fast. I only deviated from the pattern once, by skipping the mouth stitches. I couldn’t get them to work and it just looked awful. Once the body was done, I knit the legs and arms on. At that point, I decided that I need him to be posable so I found some armature wire in my stash and added that. When I make the frog again, I’m going to try to use the wire while knitting, instead of when it’s all done. That way, I can probably hide the ends without having to use so many bits of yarn. With the wire in, froggy can do push ups or sit awkwardly instead of just flop down.

So I had a completed frog when my mother sent an invite for her birthday party. The assignment was to wear ‘your best head gear’. I knew I wanted to wear my green Rita-cousin dress, so I wanted to make some sort of hat that would work with that. I also had this frog. 1+1 = 2 and I decided to make a lily-pad fascinator with the frog pinned to the top. The lily pad pattern was based on the left leaf from an image on the internet. I cut it out from the same green fabric as the dress, stretched over some foam. I then added some hair clips to the bottom. The frog was maneuvered into a normal sitting frog and safety-pinned onto the lily pad.

I love this thing. It’s adorable, it doesn’t hurt while wearing it, it’s got a frog, what’s not to like!

Rainbow Bright Side

Nice pops of colour and texture on otherwise plain grey.

I saw the The Bright Side scarf by Lori B at some point last year when I was looking for scarf patterns on Ravelry. I was immediately intrigued. It looked like such a fun idea to have different coloured bits of texture in a scarf. This was one of the projects that I really wanted to make and finish. So on November 1st, 2022, I died some Chester Wool Company Alpaca 4ply Sock yarn in a nice light grey while leaving some yarn out of the dye pot. A short rainbow gradient was then applied to the undyed section and further steamed to set. It hang out in my house for about two and half more months before I finally picked it up and started my Rainbow Bright Side.

This was my travel project from January 14 until February 19. It was in a plastic bag in my rucksack and traveled with me on daytrips and to the office. I would sometimes do some knitting on it at home too. The pattern is very simple, there are some edge stitches on both sides, but in the middle just knit (and purl on the reverse), if you come across some rainbow stitches, purl them on the knit side and knit them on the purl side. You’ll end up with a giant crescent shape at the end. As the rainbow was dyed on the skein on one side, there’s approximately the same amount of stitches between each section of rainbow. As the width of the scarf changes all the time, this means that some interesting pooling can occur if the circumstances are just right. It’s very fascinating to see how these develop while knitting.

As you end on the widest part of the crescent, I had a hard time estimating how much yarn I still needed to finish. In the end, I won yarn chicken by about 4 cm and felt very lucky about that. I really didn’t want to take that many stitches out again. After winning chicken, the scarf was wetted and the blocked. I tried to pull it into an aesthetically pleasing shape on my pool mats. I think it worked. The point of the triangle is not in the middle of the scarf, which means I can wrap the short side around my neck once, but the long side twice. It also goes with a lot of different things because the colours are both neutral and bright – at least in my opinion. It’s already seen some wear, and I’m sure it’ll come out more often!

Proof of Concept Dyeing

Trying out some more dyeing ideas.

“What happens if you separate out random partial sections of yarn and dye those a different colour?” Was the question that spurred the 28 March round of dyeing yarn. I wanted to try and see if it would 1) be possible to even separate out different parts without making it impossible to ball up later and 2) whether that would then create a more random pattern. I started with two skeins of Krypton 4ply yarn and started pulling out random strands and strand sections. The majority of the skein was dyed with a low percentage of black. It’s more grey in appearance because of that. The strand sections that were left out were dyed a nice dark green.

The second skein was Alpaca 4ply sock and got the same separation treatment. I wanted to dye this a bright light blue/turquoise colour with the contrast being navy. However, part of the skein that wasn’t supposed to be navy fell into the pot so there are some more blue spots than intended. I also had another skein of Alpaca 4ply sock that was dyed in some leftover yellow dye. Later, some orange and brown speckles were put over the top.

The first and second experiment also had some leftover dye in the pot, so I wanted to test out the Tweed Effect DK yarn that’s been hanging out in the cupboard too. I took a full skein and started it on the yarn winder until about half was into a ball. Cut the skein and had two tweed experiments. The ball was unwound gain and dropped dry into some blue dye. It did actually take on the barber pole effect that was indicated on the website. The green experiment was not as successful. The yarn came out very uneven and without much barber-poling.

After these experiments, I’ve been able to answer question 1. Yes, it is possible to separate out without making it impossible. It did take a bit longer than normal because certain bits didn’t want to let go of each other. I’ve not gotten around to question 2 though. I’ll report back once these yarns have reached either the knitting machine or the needles!

Yellow – Turquoise – Orange

Made some baby gifts from self-dyed yarn and other happy fabric.

Baby gift time again! First up, dyeing. On the last day of 2022, the second dye project was a single skein of Chester Wool DK 115 (Worsted) 50s. It is 100% merino and has 50 grams in a skein for around 100 meters of yarn. Since I still had soft yellow dye stock left from the other dyeing I did that day, I put 20 ml of the stock in my pot. Then I added several resists around the skein and dropped the thing into the pot. When it had simmered for long enough, I took it out and dyed the resists turquoise. I couldn’t resist adding some speckles and chose orange. All in all this meant that the skein turned out extremely bright and cheerful. If you ask me, perfect for a baby.

Since there was going to be a new baby, I set out to make some baby things and settled on these two patterns: Easy Peasy Baby Ball by A la Sascha and Tiny Tot by Kristen Rettig. One is a rectangle hat with tassels or pompoms and the other is a ball. I used up the entire skein in the making of these projects, so no leftovers!

I’ve also had a bit of flannel in the stash with a similar colour scheme. There’s also some additional red and green, but I wouldn’t let that stop me. The flannel was bought to make some poppies, so I set out to do exactly that. I tried to make these somewhat symmetrical with the plaid, so the scale was based on that. There’s some difference between these two poppies, one has a green stripe near the head, the other green. One has larger hands, the other smaller, but they are still very similar.

Both knitting patterns were quick, easy to knit and went smoothly. Of course the hat is way too big for the recipient, but I guess my track record stays intact on that score. The last item for the little baby was a spit scarf. Now with skateboarders, rope jumpers and a terry cloth back. It feels very soft even if the snap is on the wrong edge.

I hope the little one will have a marvelous and colourful life!

Tag: Dyeing