Yarn dyeing with onion skins

Since my experiment with tea-dyed yarn a few years ago, I've been curious about what else I can use to dye yarn. A member of my knitting group suggested onion skins, so I started looking into it. Upon finding out that onion skins can dye without a mordant, I set out to give it a try.

It took me several months to collect enough onion skins - I didn't have a precise amount I was aiming for, but I'd read that more is better. We tend to use yellow/brown onions, so those are the skins I saved. I collected them until I was fed up. I didn't weigh them, so I can't say how much I actually had in the end. Just call it a shedload.

To prepare the dye solution, I tried to shove all skins into my too-small pot, let them simmer for about an hour, and then strained the skins out. Boiled onion skins smell pretty terrible, FYI. I was surprised at how red the dye solution was.

I let the solution cool a little while I soaked my yarn. Since I am technically on stash down I couldn't buy any new yarn, so I used some undyed 4-ply alpaca that I had in my stash. Then I put the yarn in the pot and started simmering it again. The picture above shows the colour once I had put my yarn in - the yarn started taking up colour really quickly.

After simmering it for about 45 minutes, I was sick of the boiled onion skin fumes, so I turned it off and let it cool. There was still plenty of colour in the dye bath, though it was a bit lighter than at the beginning. If I was dedicated, I probably could have saved the rest of the dye and used it again on something else. Or maybe I could have used fewer onion skins to begin with.

Picture above is what I ended up with.

Oh hey, it's brown! Surprise, surprise.

When I washed the yarn it lost a bit of colour, but not too much - the water became tinged yellow. It looked much more orange/red when wet, but it dried to be a light orange-y brown. My first thought when I looked at it dry was that it was exactly like my tea-dyed yarn. Upon comparing the two, however, I see that they are quite different.

See my tea-dyed sock with my onion-dyed yarn below. The sock is darker and less red/orange, though it does have reddish undertones that don't come through well in the photo.

Tea sock with Onion yarn. A Study in Contrasts.

My problem now is what to knit with this yarn! It's a delightfully soft, delicate 100% alpaca 4-ply. Not suitable for socks - really, it would be best around the neck! It's not a colour I like to wear near my face, though. It may have to wait for a contrasting skein of alpaca to join my stash (next year, perhaps?) and become something striped to mediate the orange-y brown-ness of it. Any ideas?

I didn't follow any particular tutorials to the letter, but here are a few links that helped me figure it all out:
Ways of the Whorl
It's a Stitch Up
Lion Brand
Folk Fibers

Altogether it was a fun experiment. Maybe I'll try red onion skins some time!

Cuppa yarn

I like tea. Between the two of us, we drink a substantial amount of it - since living here I have definitely acquired a tea-drinking habit. Can you blame me when it is July and today the sun made its first appearance in weeks - for about 30 seconds - before going away again. Tea drinking is essentially a comfortable/comforting activity.

I started saving used tea bags in the freezer for the purposes of dyeing yarn a while back, and then forgot about it. The yogurt containers full of dodgy-looking frozen teabags sat forlorn in the freezer for months taking up valuable space. When Pumpkin Spins started her series on dyeing with food safe dyes, I remembered all that saved tea, and had a dye evening.



It turned out rather nicely, if I do say so myself! This is 75% wool 25% nylon sock yarn that was originally a natural shade of white.

I followed tiina teaspoon's tutorial, sort of. I have no idea what weight of old tea I used to get this shade, but I had about 4 medium-sized yogurt containers full of the frozen bags. Several of the bags got punctured at some point in the process, so there was some loose tea floating around as well. Although I strained the dye bath before I put the yarn in, some of the loose tea was powdery enough to slip through the strainer, which meant it got caught in the yarn. I fear I'll never get it all out! Oh well.

One interesting observation was the tea's effect on the cotton string I used to tie up my skein. Since dyers also use tea to dye cotton, I figured it would dye as well. It barely picked up any colour, however. To be fair, I didn't wash the string beforehand, so maybe it was coated with something that repelled the dye. Or maybe cotton is just more difficult to dye.

Another thing I wasn't prepared for was how terrible it would smell while dyeing. When I have dyed yarn in the past using food colouring and the like, it hasn't smelled amazing, but for some reason the combination of wet wool and stale tea was incredibly gross. Still, I'd do it again. It was fun, and I'll never lack for used tea bags.

First-footer FO

My Devon socks are my first FO of 2012, given that I almost finished them in 2011. Since they are socks, and they are the first FO of the new year, I've been calling them my first-footers. Not sure what sort of luck they'll bring - maybe a year full of socks?

The light in my flat was terrible today when I was attempting pictures, so these are the best I got. The socks fit, though!


Something weird is happening with the perspective here - my left foot isn't really massively larger than my right...



I used hand-dyed yarn blogged about here. I love the colours, but I do think it is just a teeny bit too busy. If I'd somehow managed to make the blackish parts less intense/contrast-y, I think the pattern would show up better.

The pattern is Cookie A's Devon. It was an enjoyable knit, even though I did them one at a time; I'd forgotten how quickly one sock can go! I'm not too keen on the way the yarnovers show on the foot section, but disappear into the leg section. To be honest, I'd prefer them to disappear in both, like the original pattern photos. I can only assume the model has skinnier feet than I, so hers don't stretch the yarnovers much. If I made these again, I might try using some hole-less increases instead of yarnovers to see how that looks.



Here's to more woolly socks this year! (And more FOs at Tami's blog.)

Semi-solid attempt #1

The other day I dyed yarn in the oven for the first time, loosely following this tutorial. A lot of people set hand-painted yarn in the microwave, and I have tried this once in the past with not so brilliant results. Since I currently don't have a microwave, and the idea of cooking plastic wrap in any device sort of bothers me, I thought I'd try the oven.

Since I love semi-solid yarns, I attempted to produce some this time. I've done semi-solid tonal colours on the stove, just by virtue of uneven dye distribution - what I mean by tonal is different concentrations of the same colour dye. In this case I wanted to try semi-solid using different colours. The idea was to mix up a few colours of dye, paint them on the yarn, mush it around a bit, and then bake it. I tried to mix up dye solutions that were close variations - not too contrasting or clashing. Unfortunately, dye solutions that are various shades of greeny blue all kind of look black in the jar, and I was too lazy to try the paper towel or flour tests.*



The above photo (sorry about the flash) shows the pre-baked handpainted yarn. As you can see, the colours I made were quite contrast-y. Oops. I decided to bake it and see what happened, even though I didn't think it would turn out semi-solid. I didn't take a picture of the result, but it wasn't to my liking. There was more neon green than I'd hoped, and it looked weird with the blackish-blue. (Neon green is awesome, but I already have socks on the go in that shade, and was looking for something else!) I decided to dye it again, this time on the stove.

And tada!



I over-dyed it blue, and I quite like these results. The blue toned down the neon green and while it's still quite variegated, the colours are less contrasted now. I am curious to see how this knits up. Whether or not this is a semi-solid fail remains to be seen, but I really like it all the same!



This is 100g of 75% wool, 25% nylon sock yarn. Once again, my camera sucks at capturing green. Imagine there are streaks of slightly brighter yellow-green running through this, in addition to the blue-greens.

*Testing a few drops of dye solution on a paper towl or in a small amount of white flour is supposed to give you an idea of what colour the yarn will come out. I'm not sure if this works, since I never do it.

yarn dyeing addiction

I dyed more sock yarn the other day (75% wool, 25% nylon). This time, I didn't attempt to keep the colours separate or mix them evenly. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I like it!



I used yellow, green, and blue - the other colours mostly ate the yellow, producing yellowy-greens. I used way too much green paste, and some bits ended up almost black, and small sections here and there stayed white.



I haven't reskeined it yet, and I look forward to some pretty crazy pooling when I knit it up.



I quite like the accidental approach to dyeing: pour some here, pour some there, spill some everywhere = awesome multi-coloured yarn!

So tell me. If this was for sale, would you buy it? Why or why not? ;)

Yarn: Team Sweden?

Armed with a supply of citric acid crystals that may last me for years (provided I don't take up canning or something), I dyed some more yarn the other day! The citric acid was brilliant - no horrible vinegar fumes.



The base is 75% wool, 25% nylon, and it's not super duper soft, but did soften up after dyeing. It feels hard-wearing, so let's hope it is.



I used Wiltons golden yellow and royal blue, and Eunny Jang's tutorial for creating self-striping yarns, so I'm excited to see how it knits up. I plan to do a "vanilla" sock for the first time in my life...



Blue is darker than it appears in this picture, but the yellow is about right.

In my head I've been calling this Team Sweden, because the colours remind me of their national hockey team colours.

Return of the Wiltons

I went diving in my mom's yarn stash when I was home, and came up with some neat stuff. My mom isn't really a Knitter with a capital K (though she did teach me to knit back in the day), but she still has a stash, and lucky for me she is very generous with it.

I walked away with some weird sock yarn.



Gedifra Fashion Trend Sportivo is apparently discontinued, and although I wasn't too keen on the colours of these skeins, I can always use sock yarn.



Thinking this would be a fantastic candidate for overdyeing, I attempted my first hand dyeing since moving to Edinburgh, using some Leaf Green Wiltons icing colour.



It turned green, as hoped, but I'm not sure this counts as a success for a few reasons. First, I had a hard to getting the dye to set and I have lingering fears it might just all wash out later. Secondly, the yarn was really loosely plied to begin with and seems to have unevenly unplied itself in the dye pot. It almost looked like a bouclé yarn when I took it out, so I'm not sure what happened. I tried weighting the skeins when I hung them to dry and that helped a bit, but I'm not really sure how it will knit up. Good thing I'm not heavily invested in this yarn. Has this happened to anyone, and how did you deal with it?



So. A fun experiment that wasn't altogether a success or failure. I want to do some more dyeing soon, but I'll need a bigger pot and I may invest in some citric acid. (I say this every time since I hate the smell of vinegar, but I never get around to it.)

Catching up

Before I left Ottawa, I did one last fit of yarn dyeing to distract myself from packing. I'd bought some Wiltons Black months before and hadn't tried it yet, so this was a good opportunity.

I overdyed this gray sock yarn with streaks of blue and green from a previous dyeing experiment that I eventually decided was too subtle for me.

Before:


After:

trying to do a Madelintosh style yarn-pose

It's still gray, but I like it a lot better this way. Knowing that Wiltons Black tends to do unpredictable things, I decided to let it break and see what happened.



I'm pleased that the gray has more depth to it now, because of the red and blue that separated out and stuck. The blue is more obvious in the photos, but there are so reddish streaks as well.

Too subtle?

I've run out of white sock yarn to dye at the moment, but I still had some Easter Egg dye mixed in the fridge, so I dyed some gray sock yarn.

The yarn, Fortissima Socka mit Bambou is 25% bamboo, which doesn't absorb food dyes. I knew this going in, and was interested in seeing how the yarn would absorb the dye. That said, I definitely didn't use enough dye, although I supplemented the green/blue Easter egg stuff with some Wiltons Royal Blue and Leaf Green.



The result is a light sage-greeny-blue. Very light. Possibly too light. I contemplated adding more dye or overdyeing it again, but it's growing on me. It's definitely more interesting than plain old gray, if you look at it closely. (Not that I have anything against gray; I just wanted to dye more yarn!)

I dumped the leaf green in when the dye bath was already hot, and I didn't stir, so it stuck in uneven places - this was kind of intentional. You may be able to see some light green traces.



I think the blue took unevenly as well, in some places.



I'm curious to see how this knits up. Next time, I'll probably use more dye and go for a brighter/deeper colour, but an experiment in subtlety isn't a bad thing.

magenta to purple: success!

Last night, this:



became this:


I used maybe a 1/4 teaspoon of Wilton's royal blue, and I could have used less.

The camera lies: the first yarn is a brighter magenta colour in unnatural light, and the second is really a deep Western purple: not navy blue.

The magenta yarn is the same I used for my Endpaper mitts two years ago. (TWO YEARS?! Gah!)



It's not really my colour, and I've been trying to find a project for the remaining skein ever since. This dyeing thing. It's addictive and terribly exciting. And now I have a colour of yarn I will actually use! This is only going to encourage me to dye more.

spring greens / neon returns

Dyeing attempt #2 with the Elann Sock It To Me 4-ply. (Initially typed 4-play, whoops! Hello, Freud.)

I used Wiltons in Leaf Green and lemon-lime Kool Aid to achieve these cheery bundles. I hoped the kool aid would provide enough acid, but it didn't look like it would exhaust, so I added more lemon juice, which helped. I also added a pinch of salt to the dye bath; rumour is that helps with dye in which blue is involved. Hard to say whether it did or not.

In low light, such as is now shining in my window, the yarn looks very bright green. In these photos it's a little more subdued-looking.



I'm having a hard time deciding what colour it really is. The close-up shot above is not colour-accurate.


You may be able to see the subtle semi-solid thing happening in this picture. I dig it. I'm tempted to say it's the only subtle thing about this yarn, haha. But in truth I wasn't going for subtle.

I'm considering overdyeing this to try to get a darker green, but the more I look at it the more I like it. I envision Twisted in a bright green like this, so maybe I'll just go for it and save darker green for another day. Two more skeins of Sock It To Me left...

Hazards of kitchen dyeing, or: bundles of sunshine

If you dye yarn in your kitchen and you have housemates, chances are un-crafty housemates will think you are crazy. They might be right.

While I was soaking some white sock yarn in a big pot on the stove, this conversation transpired:

Housemate: I'm going to get some dinner.
Me: Okay, enjoy.
Housemate: Good luck with...er *eyes pot suspiciously* whatever it is you're... uh.. making.

I later found out she thought I was making an obscene amount of noodles. Indeed, white sock yarn in a pot might look a little like a crapload of vermicelli. Then she returned to find the big pot still full of "noodles," only now they were a vibrant shade of yellow... Good times.


Now I have bundles of sunshine and they make me super happy.

The yarn is Elann Sock It To Me 4 ply - a yarn so incredibly cheap, yet fairly highly rated, that I wondered how I'd never come across it before. This was my first Elann ordering experience, and it will not be the last. In a fit of madness I ordered 6 balls, which is enough for 3 pairs of socks. Plus shipping, it came out to just under $20 - the average cost for a hank of reputable sock yarn. At this rate, handknit socks are practically affordable. ;)



Now, I don't know how it will wear, although ravelry users suggest it's pretty good for the price. It's not the softest 4-ply ever - I won't be making any scarves out of it. But it dyed up pretty well, and I'm totally excited about dyeing more. (In truth, I dyed more today: pics forthcoming).



I used Wiltons icing dye in Golden Yellow. I didn't keep track of how much, to be honest. I kept adding until I felt like it was enough. This was also an experiment in using lemon juice as the acid. I've used vinegar before to set food colouring dye, and it has worked okay, but my current house has terrible ventilation, and my bedroom is right off the kitchen, and I hate hate hate the smell of vinegar... so I wasn't willing to try that in this house. I started out with the juice of half a lemon, and by the end I'd added the other half as well, so I hope that was enough. Apparently lemon juice is slightly more acidic than vinegar anyway, which suggests that I wouldn't need as much; I never measured the vinegar I used to use, so this comparison is meaningless to me.

Anyway. Fun experiment. Next time: green that may be slightly more neon than I intended...

FO and words

Eclose
(Entomology) (of an insect) emerge as an adult from the pupa or as a larva from the egg.
~Oxford Reference Online

I saw my first two squashed lady bugs on the sidewalk today. I guess they had already experienced eclosion - the first to eclose of spring? I have no idea if I'm using that right. Please correct me. Anyway, it was unnerving to see, since there is still snow on the ground in places, although it has been reaching 10 C over the last few days. I keep waiting for another blizzard.

On that note, I finished my last hat of winter, but it's way too warm to wear it.


My eyes are tightly closed because they are not yet used to bright sunlight! squint squint.

Flora, by Margaux Pena
This pattern is full of errors, but they aren't too bad, and they are well-documented on Ravelry. I couldn't resist the cute little leaves, and I would knit this again despite errors.

Yarn: inherited handspun that tends towards DK weight, undyed and dyed blue with food colouring.

Needles: 3.5 mm for the garter stitch band, and 4.0 mm for the rest.

Mods: After the colour pattern, I knit 2 rounds of stockinette before the decreases, rather than the 5 specified in the pattern. It's still a little big, but I like to pull my hats down to my eyebrows, so it's fine.



Turns out I'm terrible at photographing my own head. I took about 15 photos and didn't manage to get any centred shots. Whoops. I blocked it flat, rather than over a balloon or something spherical since I didn't have anything on hand, so there's a bit that's slightly bulgy. I hope it will come out with wear.

I was so frustrated when I dyed the yarn last year, since I was trying for a darker blue. I got two large skeins to be turquoise/blue and then (attempting) the same formula dyed another two that turned out completely different - blue/purple. Ah, dye lots to the extreme. So much for a sweater's worth of yarn! Anyway, I left the crapload of bluish yarn under my bed for months, since I was mad at it, but once I started knitting Flora, I fell in love with this yarn. It's much brighter than I had remembered it, and it's semisolid, and quite fun. So, good news after all.

Now. What else can I make with 800+ yards of various bluish scratchy DK handspun?!

experimenting

I found out that the local bulk food store carries a large array of cake decorating materials, including many colours of Wilton's icing dye. My past forays into food colouring and kool aid dyeing have been interesting, and I've wanted to try more, so I bought some Wiltons in Golden Yellow for another experiment. I've also wanted to trying hand painting for a while, so I thought I'd give it a go. (#17 on my 101 in 1001 list).

I mixed up some wiltons golden yellow solid as well as with some red food colouring with vinegar and water, painted and poured it on a small amount of inherited handspun and this is what I ended up with.



It's not exactly what I was going for and my first thought was bog people. It's not as intense as I had hoped, since the yarn didn't take up the dye very well with handpainting. I steamed it to set the colour, and ended up pouring more dye over it as it sat in the steamer basket. It's growing on me, though. Maybe marigolds are more pleasant.



Basically, it was fun, but I still hate the smell of vinegar. Star Athena suggests using lemon juice, but I'm skeptical. Has anyone tried this and does it actually work? I will try to track down some straight up citric acid or colourless kool aid at some point anyway. I need to try dyeing with Wiltons in a pot for more intense colour, and try a different method of handpainting at some point.

dye madness

I'm beginning to think I bit off more than I could chew by deciding to dye up loads of this handspun in order to have enough for a sweater. After my initial success producing a tiny skein of beautiful blue, I dyed two more in huge roasting pans on the stove, and nearly died from vinegar inhalation. Well, was made uncomfortable ha. Anyway, they turned out very light blue, even though I'm sure I multiplied the numbers correctly, and used an insane amount of food colouring. So I did it again with more. Still light blue. In the fluorescent light of my basement it looked nearly periwinkle and I despaired for a moment. Not that there is anything wrong with periwinkle, but I just knit my Liesl in light blue that has a slight periwinkle air. Luckily, in other light the yarn doesn't look periwinkle, but it's still much lighter than the tiny skein of wonderfulness that I had my heart set on.

So. I let the two skeins sit for a few days while I got used to the sight of them, decided they weren't so bad after all, and set about dyeing the fourth. Over the course of this dyeing, I ran out of blue food colouring, but only after putting enough in - I thought. Anyway, this one turned out an entirely different colour from the last two. I know, dye lots etc.... but the first two that I dyed each in a differnt pot, albeit simultaneously, turned out quite similar. Anyway. I am not sure what I'll do now. I still have a fourth skein to dye, and possibly I'll overdye the rest. I've given up the plan of getting all this done before I move to London, so this yarn may hibernate.

I'm about to get busy entertaining my favourite person who is landing around 4 pm today, so no more yarn griping. Wooooo!

Yarn and guilt

The yarn and the guilt are completely disconnected. First, yarn:



I made this teeny tiny skein! It's cute, and I'm so excited. Same story as before: I did not spin this lovely handspun, but I dyed it. This is my fourth attempt at finding a good colour for a sweater, and I think this one wins. The picture is unfortunately a bit deceitful: the yarn is darker than this and has very subtle overtones of purple. More like hints. I'm pleased. Dyeing is fun and exciting, although I do think I need to invest in some citric acid because I'm sure breathing in all that vinegar can't be good for me, plus I hate the smell.



This time I used the stove rather than the microwave, and I added salt to the dye mixture because I read somewhere that might help. It's not exactly clear if it did or not, but whatever. It didn't hurt, I don't think. I used blue and red food colouring, and I dyed it twice in quick succession. The second time the dye refused to exhaust, so I probably didn't need as much blue that time around. This will make it a bit of a challenge to replicate this beauty for a whole sweater's worth of yarn, but I am plotting and strategizing. All will be well, or at least interesting. I'll start trying tomorrow, methinks.

In other news, I am incapable of spending money without feeling guilty about it, unless it is something mind-bogglingly necessary or useful like groceries. This could be a useful trait if it meant I spent less money; perhaps it does, but it's not clear. Right now I am finding it an awful hindrance to Christmas shopping. I don't need to do much Christmas shopping, but I need to do some, and worrying incessantly about my purchases is not helping. Sigh. Normally I consider "impulse purchases" as being the result of only one or two forays into the shop to examine said item before whipping out the credit card, and maybe I should be happy about this. Occasionally I take even less time, and that's when I really stress out about what I have already paid for. Especially when it is shipping from the states and I'm worried that it won't get here in time but not worried enough to pay more for faster shipping, obviously.

And in other guilt news, I've officially quit chocolate until Dec 13th. That doesn't sound like a very long time, and to be fair I've probably gone without chocolate for longer than that before, but I have been indulging far more than is necessary or desirable lately, and I feel like a total glutton. Wow, I'm uptight. Anyway, it is decided. No chocolate until my festive season starts in earnest when my boyfriend arrives. I'm not sure why I feel the need to impose restrictions on myself in a slightly ridiculous fashion, or post publicly about it, but there it is. Muse muse muse.

December!

It's December. Which means NaNoWriMo is over.

Tada! My novel, tentatively titled Night Shift, is finished, and it is decidedly mediocre. Woo! I plan on going back to do some editing so that I don't feel too embarassed about showing a few people - I promised this story to my cousin, who also attempted NaNoWriMo this year. But for now it feels good not to have to look at it for a bit. Snrk. My vampires are not sparkly vampires. Anyway. That is one more item to cross off my 101 in 1001 list. (Notice how I didn't say "Write a publishable Novel.")



In other news, I've been doing some experiments dyeing with food colouring. Here are about 2.5 metres each of my initial attempt. The bright cyan one is straight blue food colouring, the light green is green + blue, and the periwinkle/grayish blue is blue food colouring with some cherry instant drink mix added. I like that one the best, although I totally didn't expect it to look more gray. In some light it even looks a little greenish, but I think that's from the yarn's natural colour showing through.



Winter means crappy indoor photos, unfortunately. Sigh.

I'm going to try dyeing some more tomorrow maybe, and when this is all over I'll have enough to make something with lots of greenish blue stripes! What I'm aiming for is a dark/bright blue. I'll see what I can manage. Definitely want to get this yarn dyed before I move to London, so I can bring the yarn along and work on Basic Black, which will hopefully absorb my knitting urges enough that I won't be tempted to buy lots of yarn instead of paying rent. Woo!

FO: Odessa

Odessa by Grumperina
It's not really as lumpy as it looks in the photo, I swear! I knit an extra inch or so before decreasing because I like ears that cover my ears. It turned out a little big, but it will keep my forehead/ears warm.

I love love love how the yarn knit up. I'm so excited about it! The handspun isn't the softest yarn, but it's sturdy and a bit textured. Combined with the accidental semi-solid dye job and a simple yet interesting knitting pattern = success!

3 cherry and 2 grape later... Addiction!

I dyed about 175~ yards of that amazing handspun, and I love the colour! It's hard to tell from the photo, but it's a bit semi-solid, which I like a lot. I was afraid it would turn out bright pink or something. There was no noticeable separation of blue and red from the grape, either. I call this a success!

Once again, I used no-name instant drink mix. Man, this stuff is PUNGENT. I left the yarn to dry overnight and when I stepped into the same room as it this morning I could still smell the intense fruitiness. I left it outside for a while, and it seems to have calmed down, so I don't think I'll pass out while knitting. Woo. Again, much more pleasant than vinegar in my opinion, but it was pretty overpowering.



I followed directives from this Knitty article.

Handspun, WHAT?

I recently made a pact with myself that I would not buy yarn until I get my interest for October. I do want to knit a sweater or two in the coming months, and I will need yarn for these projects, but I figured they can wait until November 1. Then, my mom acquired a huge sack of handspun from someone cleaning out their basement, and she gave it to me. Now I'm excited and terrified!



It's beautiful stuff. I'm not judge of handspun or anything really, but it's so neat to look at. It's a tad scratchy, but not too bad, and it is all undyed. It immediately piqued my sweater need and my kool-aid dyeing obsession. It is about DK weight, which is fairly convenient, since I've wanted to knit Basic Black for a while, but I think I need to do more dyeing experiments before I commit to a sweater's worth.



So I'm looking at small projects to dye for and knit before attempting a sweater. Red? Green? Blue? I bought some cherry and grape flavoured instant drink mix today, so first I'll aim for dark red. It turns out the grocery store I hit has a terrible selection, even of proper Kool-Aid, so I may make a foray into food-colouring sooner than I expected. (I hate vinegar, but hey, I'll deal). I've read some things about colour separation when attempting to dye purple, so we'll see how this goes. I don't mind unevenness.

I'll definitely have enough yarn for more than a sweater, but all this excitement is rendering my careful queuing topsyturvy! (As if I queue carefully. Whatever). I'm thinking I'll make Odessa since I have admired it from afar for ages. No beads, and I'm hoping the handspun will give it an interesting texture that won't overwhelm or be overwhelmed by the spirals. And hoping I can make it cover my ears.

Also, as a graduation gift my grandmother gave me The Knitter's Book of Yarn, which I had ogled while borrowing from the library. I think it will be an excellent resource to have, since I want to keep learning about yarn and fibre, and stop making stupid yarn choice mistakes. Plus, lots of fun patterns. (And plenty I'll never consider making, but you know. Either way).