Wool – Hopefully Creative

Cake Yarn Dyeing Experiment

Experimenting with colour gradients.

I’ve been interested in trying to see if I can dye a skein gradually transforming rainbow colours from the start to the end. What I mean is that I don’t want the rainbow to repeat, just that the one end is red and migrates through orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and ends up as violet. So I decided to try and see if it was possible to wind up a skein and then divide it into seven and dye each of those pieces. While playing around with the yarn winder, I discovered that this was not really possible because it needs to continue turning the other remaining parts otherwise I assume tangles. So I gave up on that plan for the day and just continued winding the ball. It turned out very loose, so that gave me a new plan.

I put the new loose cake in a bath to soak for a little bit and went upstairs to the dye cupboard for a pan, a metal basket and the first leftover dye stock I could find. This turned out to be something I’d scribbled ‘blue-grey’ on, so I guess this experiment was going to be blue-grey. Once the cake had soaked enough, I put it in the basket to leak a bit of the water. The dye stock was added to the pan with more water and some vinegar. The basket was lowered into the water and then simmered for 30-40 minutes. After that, it was left to cool. The yarn was Natural Boo DK, a merino and bamboo mix.

The reason it’s an experiment was because I wasn’t sure how the dye would be soaked up by this loose cake. Would it have lots of white spots? Be darker on the outside or underside? Would it turn out very light? Would it even work? Turns out that the bottom was indeed much darker than the top, which still had some white remaining. When it was dry and I balled it up again, inside out, it turned out much lighter than to start with. It reminds me of the colour of jeans, perhaps it’ll be a fun scarf!

Empire Skirt

Wearing a 1900s skirt in 2022

A while ago, I found an image on Pinterest of the ‘Keursrok’ or corseted skirt from an old Dutch book called ‘Ik kan kostuumnaaien’ by Henriette J. van Wessem. I searched all over for that book and most of the time didn’t find or find quite expensive versions. I yet again ran a google search for it some day and lo and behold, there now was a digital version available! It is the 1908 version of the book and is available on Delpher. I had already found a physical copy on an auction site, put in an offer and forgot all about it, so I now also own a physical copy of the book.

Based on the mostly legible image of the keursrok in the book (page 142), I drew out the pattern as is on grid paper. The pattern indicated a waist of approximately 66 cm, which I figured was close enough to mine if I added enough seam allowance. I made a mock up of only the top part and made quite a few changes. Contrary to Edwardian bodies, my waist and underbust measurements are the same, so I had to remove a lot of the flare at the top of the skirt. I’m also short, so I had to take off some height. The side back part was really wrinkly, so I played around a lot with that and ended up with something that fit better.

The skirt pattern was cut from some 2 euro/meter wool fabric (I don’t know, Utrecht fabric market is weird) for the outside and I wanted to interline it with some cotton and chose some dark brown as that was what I had in the stash. After basting the different layers together, I picked it up and promptly started removing all my basting again. The thing was way too heavy for comfort. I settled on adding the mock up as a lining for the top part only and attached some rigilene to it in lieu of boning. I did use some of the brown in the deep hem.

I pinned it up on my mannequin to hang and droop as the full skirt is basically half a circle and might sink a bit on the bias. The length of the skirt was taken up and I had to remove so much. People from 120 years ago may have been a little shorter, but clearly not as short as I am. While the modern zipper wasn’t invented yet in the early 1900s, it was much easier to install one of those than the faff around with hooks and eyes in the crook of my back. So I settled for an invisible zipper, which is really quite invisible this time around.

I also added pear-shaped pockets to the seams between the two side panels because I don’t think skirts are wearable without pockets. Normally I also add belt loops, but since this one doesn’t have a belt or waistband, I added a little loop to the right pocket for my keys. While I started the project in October, I only finished it yesterday. There was so much procrastination happening the last couple of months. However, to celebrate the thing being finished, I wore it to work today and it held up great! The pockets work, the boning isn’t so aggressive that I can’t wear it for a full day, and I feel lovely and swooshy in it! I call it a success!

Dyeing with and without a Plan

Adventures in dyeing, with and without a plan.

Last Friday, after some very busy weeks at work, I needed to take the day off. First some sleeping in, but then I decided to actually go do something. The plan was to dye a skein in the colours of my Momiji coat so I could knit some sort of neck covering. I grabbed some superwash merino aran wool and put some tie wrap resists on it. The plan was to dye the skein (dark) blue with white spots. Then I could syringe some brown/orange dye into the white spots. The skein went into the pot dry and immediately soaked up some of the navy/blue combination dye. This means that some areas are lighter blue than others. It’s also a little darker than the aim, but I hope it’ll still look good once knitted up.

While I was waiting for the dye to set, I decided to experiment some more. The second plan was born quickly: lets make some rainbow yarn! It’s a superwash merino sock yarn that was soaked beforehand. I put it all on some plastic and prepared my dye colours: red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue and purple. However, when I started syringing the ‘orange’ dye on my yarn, it turned out that it was red – always label things, don’t just guess (fail 1). I added some actual orange next to it. Then I wanted to put on some yellow, but I put it on the red side, not the orange side (fail 2). So I quickly put purple dye over it to keep some sort of rainbow. Less ideal. Next step, the blue that decided to squirt all over the still white part of the yarn (fail 3). I sighed, added the turquoise and green and then decided to just use the remaining white bit for colour speckles. So I put some of the leftover dye in the white area. This skein turned out partially rainbow partially speckle. We’ll see how insane it’ll knit up.

I still had two more skeins soaking without a plan – I guess I started the day a little ambitious. Luckily there was still something that I’d wanted to try for a while. A sock weight skein with colour gradation, by leaving it in longer in some areas than in others. So I put some grey dye in the pot, and added tie wraps through which I could jam wooden sticks to keep an amount of yarn out of the pot. I set a timer for three minutes and lowered a little more yarn into the pot every time it went off. I did forget to take off the tie wraps, so I accidentally added resists. However, I’m happy with how it turned out, so that’s not a waste.

The last skein was just.. put it in an oven dish, add water, squirt leftover red and orange dye on top and heat set it in the oven. No rhyme, no reason, just bright colours. Not sure what I’ll end up doing with that. I think it is aran yarn, so it should knit up pretty quickly once I get around to it. All in all, I really enjoyed my day of dyeing! However, dyeing eventually leads to having to wind up the yarn, and that’s never super fun. So today I set out to buy myself a helpful tool. This yarn winder thing is so helpful, much quicker and easier than when I play around with a plastic bottle. Of course, it still takes forever when there’s a knot, but I did manage to wind up one of the aran balls in about 10 minutes (win!).

Rainbow Socks

Double experiment with dye and with a knitting machine.

I recently acquired a Knittax S knitting machine and to thank the original owner, I am making him socks.

The yarn I’m using is Alpaca 4ply Sock: 60% Superwash Merino 20% Superfine Alpaca 20% Nylon sock yarn, purchased from Chester Wool. This yarn is so soft, I love it. It was hand dyed by using it as the ‘cleaning tool’ when making up some pots of citric acid with Eurolana dyes. The spoons that were used to put the dye in the pots, was wiped on the wet yarn. The distribution of colours is basically ‘which bit is still too white’. Colours are black, brown, grey, orange, yellow, soft yellow, red, magenta, violet, blue, navy, turquoise and green. They came out quite muted, but I do like them. When knitted up, they are more obvious than on the ball.

As for the socks, the instruction booklet for the knitting machine came with patterns in the back so I chose to make the basic socks for men. The pattern is in the images (in Dutch, translation for the image below). For the first try, I cast on exactly as intended, but chose setting 5 on the machine. These socks turned out quite large so I frogged them and started again on a setting 4 on the machine. The length that came out on setting 4 matched the book, so that seemed to have gone well. I’m not sure if I’m seaming them right, they feel quite bulky and I’m not sure that’s nice on the foot. I’ve also discovered that knitting takes about as much time as the seaming. The knitting is very quick, this machine goes a hell of a lot faster than I ever can by hand.

Image translations (left). *Hiel*: heel; *Ondervoet*: bottom of the foot; *Teen*: toe; *Bovenvoet*: top of the foot; *Beenlengte*: length on the leg; *Naad*: seam; *Verkorte toeren*: short rows; *Open steken*: provisional stitches.

After finishing one sock, I brought it to the original owner to try on. He claimed that they were indeed the right size and that the ridges of seaming wouldn’t be annoying. As he’s been wearing machine knit socks like this for a long time, I’m inclined to believe him. So then I set out the knit the second sock with the same settings. It took me a few goes and a lot longer than it should have but in the end, sock number 2 was finished. Before seaming it together it does look really strange and not what you expect. Once the seaming is finished however, it does look like socks. I’m amazed.

I really enjoyed the process, can’t wait to make more things on this machine!

New Year’s Dyeing

Experimenting with yarn and different methods of heat setting, resulting in three different colourways!

After not sleeping enough with the fireworks still going for hours beyond midnight, completing the puzzle I started in 2021 and finishing up the last oliebol, I got to work on new years day. I’d been thinking about dyeing yarn all holiday week, and just.. didn’t get up to actually do it. I’d decided I wanted to try a few different things, oven dyeing, speckles and partial dip. I used three different yarns, all from World of Wool in the UK.

The one that I started with was some 56’s English Superwash Aran Weight, I have six skeins and decided to dye five of them. I kept one spare in case the sweater I want to make with this requires more than 5 skeins. I decided to try and oven dye some yellow and orange speckles citric acid speckles on it. The oven dyeing initially came from a blog post by Needles on the Move found here. The citric acid speckles from ChemKnits Tutorials on YouTube. I mixed soft yellow dye in a little pot with citric acid, and in another pot I mixed soft yellow dye and red dye with the citric acid. The yarn was put in a second hand roasting tin and the dye mixes sprinkled on top. Unfortunately, due to the water that needed to be added, this batch turned out a little bit runny, so the colours are not as defined as I would have liked them. Afterwards, I found a blogpost by The Impatient Dyer here, that talks about how to solve that problem.

I wasn’t going to wait for quite some time for the roasting pan to be free again to dye the other skeins, so I just used my dyeing pots for those. One has a steamer insert on which you can drape the yarn and then add the colour. The other has a steaming section for doing the same thing. These speckles turned out a bit clearer. You can maybe make out some small hue differences in the skeins that are hanging above. The two right most ones are more muted with speckles that were less clear.

The next type of yarn was sock weight, Merino Superwash / Bamboo Sock Weight. I decided to go for some blue and turquoise but with lots of white. The dye was mixed with citric acid, put onto the yarn and then the wool went into the steamer pans. I think it looks cute and I am looking forward to see what it looks like knit up into a project. In case that project will be socks, I ball them up into two ~50 gram balls that are still connected to each other, so that I know for sure how long my sock can be without running out of yarn.

This last yarn was an experiment. The base is Merino Superwash Sock Weight Singles. I wanted to dye a skein partly grey with some speckles of orange. So I dumped an amount of grey dye in the water and partly hung the skein in that dye water. The remainder of the skein was draped over a steamer inset and speckles were applied. Some grey with citric acid and to create the orange I mixed some red and yellow dyes in the citric acid.

When this skein was rolled into two ~50 gram balls, it changed the look a lot. The skein has a dark section whereas you can’t really see that in the balls. I’m really curious to see it knit up. To turn the yarn into balls, I use this weird contraption that I got from a secondhand store for 3.50 euro – maybe used for spinning? In combination with a small empty bottle to allow for a centre pull ball. While it takes forever to wind up over a kilometer of yarn, I was very happy once it was all completed. The yellow/orange yarn is already being knit up into a project that’s about 90% complete, so I hope to finish that soon. There are no intentions for the two sock weights as of yet.

I’m Dyeing (Wool)!

The first step of the journey to make a night sky on my body with yarn.

Ever since May 2018 when I saw the image below on the new Facebook page of a knitting shop that was to open in Vlissingen, I’ve been obsessed with recreating this. While I would have loved to support the shop, the colourway that they had of this was very blue and not very night-y, so I decided to wait until the next dye-run was completed. However, before I could get my greedy mitts on it, the shop sadly closed in 2019.

Months of feverish Etsy-searching on, and nothing would come remotely close to what I dreamed would be my starry sweater. Several times over the years, I went into the Etsy and google searches looking for my perfect starry night yarn. Then I decided to just take the plunge and order yarn and stuff for dyeing. I filled my online basket, got scared and deleted it all again. Cue several repeats of that too. Then came lockdown, and two months in (May 2020) I decided to give myself permission to actually spend the money and buy the things.

So off I went to worldofwool.co.uk and got myself 5 skeins of Cheviot Superwash Aran, Eurolana dyes, some other random single skeins and a drop spindle kit (potentially more on that.. in the distant future). Once the lockdown was eased a little, I went on several haunts to the local second hand shop and got some pans, stirring things, and eventually a steamer – very good bargain there. I’d read that you really shouldn’t use the pans for dyeing for food so separate everything was needed. Hence also the creation of the Dyeing Cupboard. And then all the equipment sat on the Dyeing Shelf, sat some more, and sat some more. Until the very final day of my Winter holiday, i.e. last Sunday, when I decided I was going to Do. The. Thing. Today.

I used these instructions and set out to dye some test bits of yarn. That seemed to go well enough, so after some more general being scared, I actually dyed my first skein. I figured that the final result would only be visible after drying and I wasn’t going to wait for that, so I did all five that afternoon. I used yellow, navy and blue to create a sort of variegated night sky with somewhat random bits of yellow.

Since I quite enjoyed the process of puttering about with dye and yarn, I bought myself some more skeins this last week and hope to get some more funky yarn dyed in the future. As for knitting this up into that perfect sweater, that’s going to have to wait until I’ve finished my current ‘fallen leaves’ sweater. I’ve just divided the body stitches from the sleeve stitches after the yoke, so there’s been some progress?

Hopsalots Slippers

I’ve had a pattern on my radar for years now (2014, apparently). Almost since I discovered the existence of Ravelry. Hopsalots is a pattern by Tiny Owl Knits for bunny slippers. The are absolutely the cutest bunny slippers I’ve ever seen. Now, I’ve been too cheap to purchase that pattern for all those years. Even though I had already started purchasing 100% wool yarn. This January, I finally convinced myself that I really needed bunny slippers. So I bought the pattern and got to work.

The slipper bases and ears I managed to finish knitting in one day. I also felted them on that one Saturday, but then it took me a week more to actually put the things together and add the little pompoms for tails. While sliding around my house, I discovered some form of anti-slip might be safer. So I went and got some sock stop to put latex dots on the bottom. It still makes me very happy to look down while walking around with those little floppy ears bouncing around.

Purchase well made!

Bottle Cover

A weekend at a larp and a new bottle require a new bottle cover. The new bottle was a lot larger than previous bottles and would not work for it’s intended purpose. I did base the design in part on my previous version Invisible Plastic.

After the hat I still had some more of the wool left over and figured it would work as a more or less waterproof cover. I cut out a circle, added some sides and a hanging loop. I needed to attach to pieces together to form a large enough rectangle for the sides. Then I needed to figure out how to close the thing. I the end, I opened up the front a little and keep the flaps to close over each other. Then I added another button to the front and a semi-decorative closure in a vague leaf shape.

I made it somewhat too big by accident and decided to sew an additional seam at the front to make sure it was not too loose. This also allowed me to open up part of the piecing on the front and create a miniature pocket. For proof I added a brownie spoon, it will probably hold a pencil while in action. (note from after the event, yep, it did)

Robin Hat

A friend of mine had a hat for larp that I really liked. It was simply four pieces sewed together with the edges folded over. It reminded me of Robin Hood’s hat with the feather missing.

So I asked him whether I could copy the pattern. It was alright and I did, years ago. Now, for some reason I never got around to making it, but I managed to rectify that situation on Thursday.

I found the remains of the first attempt at my woolen cape, where I managed to forget factoring in that necks also require space. I cut the four pieces for my hat and sewed the two quarters, then the seam was sewed flat. One had a bit left open to allow for turning the hats inside out. Once the two halves were finished, I stitched them together turned it right side out and stitched it flat again. It was a pretty easy and quick project and I had a nice warm (and probably water resistant) hat to wear this weekend.

My Sheep

In the summer of 2010 I worked in an ecological museum with a garden. The owners were two hippies (sorry, there is no other way to describe them), eating ecological peanut butter, sour dough bread and selling biological pizzas. The lady who owned it was wandering around the place, one day, with three sacks of sheep wool. Straight of the sheep. Somehow we got talking about it, and I mentioned that I knitted and was interested in learning how to spin. One of the bags contained leftovers and she gave them to me for free.

Now, admittedly, that bag was left unopened for about those 2.5 years since I received it. The couple of times it was opened, the smell was quite.. interesting?? The past two weeks I did not have to go to school, although I did have some homework I should finish. However, freedom makes you do strange stuff, so instead of the homework, I located the tutorial online (this one) that could tell me what I needed to do with ‘my sheep’, as I have since named it. It said that I should have washed it as soon as I got it, I didn’t of course, but now I decided to tackle the problem. First, one has to remove all the dirty bits (straw etc.), which I did halfheartedly in the first batch, a bit more vigorously in the second batch, and I started on a third batch:

You might wonder why the pictures that will follow have different colour wool in it, that’s because I only remembered making pictures once I had the first load done, and was halfway through the second load.

So you pick out all the bits, and fill the bathtub (our bathtub fills very, very, very slowly and it needed to be half to 2/3 full of hot, hot water). You then spread the wool in a single layer over the water and push it up and down in the water, careful not to agitate it too much. This ‘first rinse’ results in some really dirty water. Pick the wool out and let it drain. Fill the tub again (this is what makes it take forever to do this in my house) and add some detergent, do the pushing up and down and drain and repeat the process if the water is still icky.

If you decided you’ve done enough washing because your back is killing you from bending over the bathtub too much, or because it really is clean, it’s time for the rinse. Again fill the bathtub and now add half a cup (whatever that may be) to the water and dump the wet wool in it and push it up and down. Drain it again. Now it’s time for drying. My first batch was small, since I wanted to test it out. I found some chicken wire in the garage, draped it over a laundry basket and spread the wetish wool out over it. The second batch was much larger and since I’d given up because of said back I draped the entire chicken wire mesh over the bathtub to catch the falling droplets.

I did the washing 2 days ago and it’s been drying since. I should take it down some time soon, since it’s feeling pretty dry. The next step will be ‘carding’ or getting the fibers to align for spinning. I’ve been asking around for hand carders, but they do not seem readily available anymore. (Go figure!) So I need to buy some of the internet and then the next leg of the journey can start!

Someday people, someday I will have my own homespun scarf (I’m not going to bother with a sweater, much too difficult!).

Tag: Wool