(not) seeing red

Somehow in moving from NJ to SLC I managed to  leave all my red & shades of red dyes at home. Red, scarlet, burgundy, magenta - all in NJ. I do have yellow and orange, but it’s so limiting to dyeing when you are missing a primary color!

The upside of SLC is that it is desert, so I can dye in the morning and spin at night if I so desire.

Add comment February 21st, 2007

Lots of photos

I have photos of a bunch of stuff I’ve made and not posted.

First of all I got a new spinning wheel…a Kromski Minstrel. I love it and it’s beautiful too. Now that I’ve gotten the feel for double drive, I really like it.

Of course a new spinning wheel means some test spinning. I realized that somehow none of the red/pink dyes I own made it to Utah. So cool colors it is!

Here are my first few skeins while I was getting a hang of the Minstrel.

I also spun up some 2ply lime/purple but then I immediately knit it into a headband so there’s no straight up yarn shot.

Saving the best for last… This is the yarn I spun up for my Spin to Knit Secret Pal. Now if she ever replied to my emails I might send it to her.

Add comment February 10th, 2007

Bali Lime Yarn

A few months ago I spun some yarn inspired by the box from a candle from Pacifica candles. Because of the bright colors some of the exposures on the photos I took were off. I meant to take new photos, but since I gave this yarn to my sister for Christmas I guess I just have to post what I’ve got!

I decided to make a 2 ply yarn using falklands 56 wool. So to start off I kettle dyed 2 lengths of wool. Both balls primarily used yellow and lime green. The left also had hot pink, brown, and a little olive. The right ball had some darker greens and olive.

Then I spun them both as singles.

Then I plied them together, making some hot pink supercoils.

Here is the finished product with the inspiration. I was really happy with how it came out.

You can see some more photos on the flickr set.

Add comment January 22nd, 2007

Some Truly Outrageous Yarn

The topic for Fiber Friday a couple of weeks ago was “Fire & Ice”. Now I can think of several more normal ways to interpret this, but as I am definitely not normal I instantly thought of Jem. There was an outfit for Jem called Fire ‘N Ice so it had to be recreated.

This is a combination of white and coral wool liberally carded with gold angelina. I made the coral by carding pink and orange together. I think it came out pretty outrageous.

It’s about 3oz and 72yds.

Add comment October 15th, 2006

Camo Hat

I recently posted about some camo yarn I had kettle dyed. Well last week I finally finished knitting the hat. It’s for my friend and he told me last night that he loves it and it fits perfectly. That’s good because he had claims of a big head, so I made it and it was huge! I had finished it when I realized was too short, even for me. So I undid the crown shaping and added an inch.

My friend didn’t even know I did they dyeing which I take as a compliment. It’s couture baby! I also did the inside band on smaller needles with a single strand, while the rest of that is on 10.5s using 2 strands of Knit Picks Andrean Silk.

Add comment September 22nd, 2006

Camo & Tinkle Tweed

I’ve had a busy weekend so far. Rainy days are pretty good for getting dyeing and spinning done.

First off I finished spinning “Tinkle Tweed”. I dyed and carded this a few weeks ago but I hadn’t got much spinning done. I kettle dyed falklands wool and tinkle light blue. Then I carded that with some brown wool that a I felted and chopped up into little bits. Then I spun and plied it.

Altogether it’s 140 yds and 6oz. I’m planning on knitting a hat out of it. This is one of the first yarns I’ve made that I’ve really planned out and had an intended use for. Plus it’s soo soft. I can’t wait to get knitting.

I also got around to dyeing some yarn for another hat project of mine. My friend asked me to knit him a camo hat but the only camo yarns I could find are 100% acrylic. Yuck! So I bought 3 skeins of Knit Picks in Andrean Silk and skeined it with 2 strands. Then I kettle dyed it with brown, chestnut, forest green, olive, yellow, and black. Or those are the dye colors I used to get the colors. I tend to a dash of this and that until I get the colors I want.

I love kettle dying. I only started doing it since I did dyeorama, but I love the results. I took some photos of the dyeing in progress but I’m having issues with that camera. So all I’ve got is this photo of the test swatch I did. I think the colors came out great and this will look fab as a camo hat.

Add comment September 3rd, 2006

Cotton Dyeing

I haven’t had much time for craftyness lately. I did knit a hat last week on the Path. I need to take photos and post. But I wrote a big to do list for this weekend and on it was to dye yarn for the baby blanket I want to make. My friend is due in October so I figure I better get started!

So I got out my dye buckets and soaked my yarn. If you recall awhile ago I had purchased a 2lb cone of natural dk cotton. I had skeined it up as needed for dyeing so all I needed to do was dye. I purchased 4 colors of Jacquard Procion MX for this cobalt blue, lemon yellow, bright green, and brilliant orange.  My goal was to have a bright slightly greenish yellow, a yellowish leafy green, and a bright blue. I realize that I didn’t need the bright green to accomplish this, but I’m lazy.

The colors came out sooo well! I’ve turned into one of those people who do a little dash of this and that to make my dye formulas. I guess that is a sign that I must understand how color theory works, but really it’s because I’m lazy and impatient.  The only color I modified was the leafy green because it was originally too muddy and I wanted it more yellow. I just used the cobale blue staight for the blue and it’s a gorgeous color.

The yarn still wasn’t dry this morning, but maybe when I get home I can wind some balls and get cracking. I will post some photos of the dyeing results too.

Add comment August 14th, 2006

A Bellini, Please

While I was dyeing for Dyeorama a couple of weeks ago I also dyed up some roving. I did a big 8oz hunk of domestic sort of splashed with hot pink and orange. It was the last thing I dyed and I was getting lazy and tired. I also dyed some firestar tinkle a deep orange. Once it was all dry I carded it up together. I sent one batt to my Dyeorama buddy, Mama E. Then a few days ago I spun up the rest. I ended up with 3 bobbins of a sportish weight. My plan was to ply but after a few minutes of that I realized plying wasn’t doing anything for it, so I’m sticking to singles. It reminds me of a nice sparkling Bellini at sunday brunch.

2 comments June 14th, 2006

the weasels are loose!

1 comment June 14th, 2006

dyeing projects

A couple of weeks ago I bought 10 jars of Jaquard Acid dye at Pearl Paint. I’ve been saving up 1 L soda bottles to make dye stock. So yesterday while it rained I got dyeing. I only had 6 bottles so I had to pick which colors made the cut. While I was planning on dyeing other stuff my main goal was to do my dyeorama yarn. So those colors got dyestock priority.

Once I had all my dyestocks made and my fiber soaking it was time to get ready to dye. I had 2 skeins of sock yarn. I had been planning to paint them, but I’ve been reading the Twisted Sister Sock book and I’m intrigued by kettle (hot) dyeing. So I decided to give it a whirl. First up I dyed some purple and bright green to get the feel for it. Then I got working on the dyeorama yarn.

The olive I got is very brown so I mixed it with kelly green to get real olive color. Then I picked out chartreuse, gun metal (dark blue) and sky blue. Kettle dyeing seems very “artistic” to me. You can dribble here, squish there, pour here to get very interesting results. Painting yarn is effective, but seems rather mathmatical to me. I need to be a little more patient in my hot dyeing, since I forget to let one dye exhause before I add another. Although that probably makes some interesting effects.

Anyway, I love the way it came out. The color bands are very small, so I was quite interested to see how it knit up. Since certain colors are used more overall, it should have the same effect as larger bands from a distance, but be more varied close up.

I finally got good brown dye so that was a theme for my wool dyeing. I did some brown and blue, and some brown and turquoise. I dyed some tinkle and some wool brown to card together later. This was all on the stove. Then I had 8oz of roving that won’t fit on my stove, so I sort of splattered it with pink and orange and microwave steamed it. Then I dyed some firestar orange for carding. Note to self: get a big roaster pan for dyeing.

All of that dyeing took 3-4 hours and made my back ache. But now I’ve got lots to play with! You can check them out on flickr. They are all the most recent photos.

1 comment June 4th, 2006