Tis better to dye with friends than to die alone

Over the holidays I visited with Lawre, my garden-buddy, and she showed me some beautiful blue faced leicester and silk roving she had received as a gift and said our friend Liz had also received a gift of the same fiber. I immediately recognized it as the same fiber I'd splurged on at MDSW this year. It was so soft and luminous - one of those over the top fiber blends that makes you cry with happiness to get to spin it. Liz & Lawre were getting together to dye theirs, and I thought it would be fun to join in with my ball of fluff too.

We debated sticking with our mutually favorite colorway of purple-blue-green, or trying to branch out. We settled on red-orange-yellow-purple for a fiery sunset kind of look. With exacting precision and consummate care we measured our dyes [excuse me, I have to get a towel to sop up the dripping sarcasm pooling around that last sentence]. We soaked the fiber in hot vinegary water, squooshed the water out, and laid the fiber on plastic wrap. Lawre went for a long zig zag snake, I spiraled mine in a long oval, and Liz chose short back and forth zig zags. We took turns filling big syringes with dye and squirting it onto our fiber.

I knew I was going to split the fiber in half lengthwise to spin. I had an idea that with a long color repeat it would be possible to have a 2 ply yarn where the colors stay pretty cleanly consistent. It makes sense in theory, I hope in practice it comes out as well as in my mind. I think Zauberball yarn does the same thing. I intended to have longer color segments, but my hands did what they wanted, and now that I'm spinning I think it was a wise move.

 I think I added way more dye than anyone else. I really wanted to avoid any white spots. By the end I was just free-pouring from the dye cups. Though the number of rinses it took to get all the excess dye out makes me think I overdid it a bit. But the colors didn't get muddied, which is all I really care about.

When the fiber finally cooled and dried (a VERY long process that makes you remember that wool is favored for its heat retention and moisture absorption), I was a bit disheartened. The colors were pretty, but the fiber was kind of matted and didn't slip and flow like it did originally. But after some serious predrafting and fluffing it was again wonderful to spin. The colors are a bit weird in this photo, everything should be much warmer colored.

A bit of wave from the wool crimp gives the yarn more life than straight top, and seeing the different colors turn into yarn is really fun. I'm spinning much more now than I have for the last year. Makes me think I need to dye some more fiber soon.

Socks socks socks... and chocolate

You ever have those days where you really want something chocolatey, but just can't figure out exactly what you're craving? Candy? Cookie? Brownie? Ice cream? High quality dark chocolate bar? Nope, nothing is calling out as the exact right item. That's how people end up drinking mexican hot chocolate and eating dark chocolate covered dried plums. Oddly, it seems to be satisfying the craving. Hooray!

Ok, I'm not really talking about chocolate, I just wanted to set the stage for my real post. SOCKS! Last month I dyed a sock blank with my SIL. In case you're asking what the hell a sock blank is--I used a knitting machine to knit up yarn into a big chunk of fabric, then we dyed it, then I unraveled it and used the yarn to knit a pair of socks. Ridiculous? Just wait till you see the final product! Dyeing the yarn this way allows for color gradations that wouldn't be possible if dyeing the yarn in a skein. And for some magical reason using this yarn and pattern makes the sock knitting go twice as fast as normal. I had these done in about a week! Holy speed knitting batman! Here's the awesome socks I knit for my mom's birthday present. Dang, I sure hope she doesn't see this post before her party. And best of all there's enough dyed yarn left for a pair of knee socks for me!

Second sock-related item: I've been trying hard to keep up with the laundry and not doing a very good job at that. But how can I be totally to blame when the Sock Monster is hard at work disrupting my sock matching? Sure, I can accept having one or two mismatched socks in the middle of a laundry day, but this is just ridiculous: I know in this photo they look like matched pairs, well maybe not the knee socks, but in reality they are all different sock patterns. I really don't know where all the sockmates are, I hope they turn up in the next load, or things are going to start looking silly. Because handknit rainbow stripe socks aren't silly at all.