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In love with this sweater I'm making.

It’s fall, so time to think of scarves and sweaters and other woolly items. I give you Swaying Cables Scarf by Talitha Kuomi. This was my first attempt at cables, and not really the best choice. Especially since a lady recommended to me some small wooden cable needle holders which could not possible hold the 12 stitches that made up the cable. I turned to a circular needle to put them on instead. Take my advice and start with a nice 2 stitch or 3 stitch cable. It wasn’t supposed to be 70″ long but somehow I managed to make it around 9 feet. Nope, I did not make a swatch before I got started.

Despite mistakes on my part, the scarf turned out wonderfully and the swaying of the cable is a charming feature which looks good from both sides. The friend who got this as a gift loves it and wraps it around his neck three times and sits in cafes feeling it gives him a certain cachet. Because it is a worsted yarn, the extra length is not oppressive. In a bulky, such a length would probably be overwhelming.

This is Wool of the Andes Worsted which I kettle-dyed with Jacquard Acid Dyes, red dye with black dye dropped into the kettle after the red, and dubbed Cherry Bomb. My dyeing guru is Gail Callahan whose book I rely on. This was only the second time I kettle dyed, so if you are interested, don’t be afraid to try it. You can always start with the food coloring dyes.

Go the Knitpicks for bare yarn, dye, and the book: go here https://www.knitpicks.com/

I made a mistake on the second Circe's yoke and had to go back through and embroider the fix. See if you can spot it.

All fixed!

It’s Hot Out, Let’s Dye Some Yarn: Blues Are Gone

I know, it’s summer, so thinking about woolly knitting projects seems wrong, but you have all this free solar power, and you need not heat up your kitchen to dye yarn.

This yarn started as a medium gray which is not a color I can wear, so I decided I had nothing to lose if I tried to over dye it.  I knew from Gail Callahan that she over dyes regularly and with success. Using a solution of Sky Blue Jacquard Acid Dye, I hand painted the skeins which were a 100% wool bulky. Acid means only you first soak the wool in vinegar. This is a commercial dye, so you take powdered dye and make a mixture using boiling water. You must use containers, glass jars, etc, that you only use for dyeing as you do NOT want to this stuff in containers or with spoons that you use for food. Fortunately, old jars of all kinds work, so recycle them, and the world’s thrift stores are full of old kitchen utensils. Read Callahan’s book for what safety precautions to take when handling dye. The rules are pretty straightforward.

I was worried that the dye wouldn’t take over grey. It did take two full days of solar heating wrapped in a black trash bag laid out in the yard, for it to take up all the dye. It did feel like a bit of a miracle that the water I wrung out of the skeins on the second afternoon was perfectly clear--Thanks, Sunshine. More heat means simply more time for solar heat, as it does if you are kettle dyeing, etc.

The results are wonderful, a vibrant set of single-color harmonies. I decided to take a look at all the others not-quite-my-colors skeins that people had given me, and you can see some of the results this week.

To find Gail Callahan’s book and Jacquard Acid Dyes which work on all kinds of proteins, i.e. animal fleece and hair, go to Knitpicks.com,

https://www.knitpicks.com/hand-dyeing-yarn-and-fleece/p/31330

Fluffy First, My First Knitted Sweater: Nu by Vedis Jonsdottir

The reason I am slightly out of focus above is that I was jumping up and down as I was so excited that my first knitted sweater actually fit. I thought it would, but holding it up to your chest and thinking it will probably fit, and pulling it over your head and finding out it truly does fit, are two different things. I added the rib stitching at the bottom of the sweater and, as you can see, it is a little goofy looking there, but the collar got much better.

It is an easy first sweater, done in the round on very large circular needles, so only a knit stitch and some easy increases as you go until the collar when you must do rib stitches. It goes relatively quickly if you are a new knitter. You must use either short circulars or double-ended needles for the sleeves. I did the latter and sometimes they went sliding out. Oops. I must admit one sleeve got started several times as I forgot to do my increases. Oops.

I recommend binding off the underarm stitches. I bound off one side, and left live stitches on a piece of yarn on the other side as the pattern called for, to see which worked better. The bound off side remained far more stable in shape and easier to sew together when all was done.

This was made in Biggo yarn from KnitPicks.com. On the one hand, it is super soft and pettable, if that is a word. On the other, it is definitely pilling. Sigh. This is the simplest pattern in the book, but I am looking forward to trying more of them.

You can find the yarn here: https://www.knitpicks.com/yarns/Biggo_Yarn__D5420217.html

Dyeing My Way Around the Color Wheel with Yarn

I so enjoyed my yarn dyeing party that I have been studying Gail Callahan’s book on dyeing yarn ever since. I bought 16 oz bottles of food coloring, far more than you need for a yarn dyeing party, so I have a lot left over for experiments. Callahan suggests you dye your way around the color wheel in order to learn more about color mixtures. I would call this dyeing your way around a pastel color wheel which is in keeping with her wise advice: you can always add more dye to your yarn, but cannot take dye out of your yarn.

I found it useful to work on flattened packing paper in order to keep the various mixes straight by marking them down on the paper next to the mason jars which held the yarn. I also adopted Callahan’s practice of attaching dyed yarn samples to a piece of Tyvek marked with the dye mixture and other info.

Why Not Throw Yourself A Yarn Dyeing Party?

Last week, I did just that and it was tons of fun. All you need is some bare yarn (I got mine from KnitPicks.com) and some food coloring. By using food coloring, you can have people eating brunch too and nobody accidentally eats something toxic.

I followed the directions from the book Hand Dyeing Fleece and Yarn by Gail Callahan which I blogged earlier. She explains how to set up a yarn dyeing area so you don’t do any harm to your kitchen, see my counter in the last photo, how to make up some mini-skeins of bare yarn, and how to play with color. Callahan’s book explains how to use commercial dyes fully too, so if you get excited about this experiment, you can learn how to dye on a larger scale. 

My guests included a biochemist, an expert knitter, and a bunch of curious women who knew nothing about yarn or dyes, and we all enjoyed ourselves. As you can see from the two sets of skeins, mixing the primary colors will give you all kinds of shades. The close up of the purple skein shows how the dye pigments wick up the yarn creating new colors.

So if you are pondering a party theme, think yarn dye, is my advice. Start saving containers, from yogurt cups to jars with lids. By using food coloring, you can use all your own kitchen tools. If you move on to commercial dyes, you will need separate tools that you cannot use for cooking.

For bare yarn, go here: http://www.knitpicks.com/cfSearch/Search.cfm?q=bare+yarn

Ignore how messy gross my house is. Here is my kid, Mini Jelly, enjoying the new sweater with all the bells and whistles!

I make one or two for them each year while it's cold out. This is the second one. Adapted from Knits for Everybody by Knitpicks. The pattern is for a pullover but I adapted it to be a cardigan with hood, pockets, and button band.

This one was a little scary because I did the steek wrong before cutting, then again when I tried to fix it, the. Again for another 4 times until finally I got the stitches properly anchored for the button band. Yikes lol