Friday, April 07, 2006

Craving for color

Not just any colors but colored yarns. I read on the socklists I'm on all praice for STR-"Socks That Rock" but have not realy fallen in love in their colorways. Koigu on the other hand...
Well as you all now: I have a huge stash! And I have dyes for protein fibers. So Today, on a sickleave alone in the house I dug out my dyes and some old hanks of weaving wool and I started to paint. The yarn is not the soft yarn you would like to have close to your skin. I have made a sweater of it before and it worked fine. A hat I made became to scratchy though.

I had in mind doing something that could be used in a wintercoat I plan to knit. The base yarn for that is purple, what else? I wanted something that made the purple look more alive and I wanted some lime color in it.

These are the four hanks I made all in blue, turqoise and purple, two with lime and two without for other unknown purposes. The turqoise and the ble color became a bit pale but a test swatch gave a very satisfying result.

And the balls are beatifull.


I might never want to order any colored yarn again. The result is so much what I love and like that it's almost scary.

They are perfect!

New yarn needs to be dyed A S A P !!!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Wonderful. For the first time, I'm thinking that it might be worthwhile to color my own! If you have a tutorial for 'how to paint' yarns, plz add the link.

Mitz said...

Well I had these istructions but I did not follow them. Used them as something to go back to when I had questions.
I must confess I have dyed before but then only in a pot and trying ti get an even color.
This time I wet the wool first with a detergent and then rinsed in water with white vinegar, squesed the water out, put the wool on a the kithen table, protected with thick plastic. made color solutions with white winegar, water and dye, very little in each container and then brushed it on with a brush, bigger ones are faster, ;).
When all colors were applied I put the hank carefully in a plastic bag and put it in the micro. Heat it up and let it as described in the link above.

Anonymous said...

WOW! I LOVE the colors of your yarn! I've been too afraid to try dying on my own. However, I have purchase a lot of "plain white" fleece that I intend to spin and attempt to dye. (Not sure how long it will take me to get to the point, but that's my plan!).

Have you hand dyed any yarn for socks?

Gita said...

Vi har tydligen samma goda smak när det gäller färger!
Look at this! http://tinyurl.com/rsg3w