Another Overdye Success

Back in the early days of my handpainted yarn obsession, I was distracted by all sorts of pretty colors. I hadn't yet learned 1. That yarn will pool and drive you crazy and 2. oh, all those colors combined together look like clown barf.

Case and point.



1 skeins of Fleece Artist Sea Wool in the "Renaissance" colorway. This was a blend of 70% wool, 30% seasilk, which is a fiber processed from seaweed. It had a lovely sheen, and I was attracted to the flashy colors, which looked so crazy beautiful on the skein. Once I started knitting though, I realized that this might be a bad mistake.



Ooooh the pooling. And the primary colors clashing.



Having red, green, blue and dark purple in one place really did look like clown barf. Yargh.

Just a slight grumble about this yarn base- the seasilk did not blend very evenly with the wool, making large white slubs in the yarn.

Also, this yarn is very loosely plied. You really want sock yarn to have a nice, tight ply as to keep abrasion and wear to a minimum. I ran the yarn through my wheel before I started to tighten it up a bit, but I still have my doubts about the long-term use of these socks. It probably would have been better to use for a garment that is not quite so hard wearing.

I made the Leyburn Socks by Minty Fresh. I loved the pattern, but I was so disenchanted with the yarn that I turned them into anklets (I made them toe-up).

They sat in my sock pile for the better part of a year, unworn and unloved. Finally, I decided that overdye is the way to go.



Much better, right? I used acid dyes and mixed a deep, dark sapphire blue. The seacell slubs because more apparent when it was done (they are the white flecks in the pictures), but the crazy colorway mellowed out enough for me to actually like these socks.





Being all one color also makes the sock pattern pop more.

These are now going to be gifted to someone who lives in Florida. They are lightweight and not terribly warm, so they will be perfect for chillier days in the sunshine state.

The specs:

I used 1 skein of Fleece Artist Sea Wool. The pattern is Leyburn from Minty Fresh. I loved this pattern and plan on making them again one day.

Mistakes were Made...

...although it wasn't by me this time. I am the salvation in this situation.

Multi-colored handpainted yarn has its place, but in this case, it did not belong in a complicated alpaca sweater. It looked like clown barf from a very sick, sad clown with emphysema.





The alpaca yarn was way too busy and too many clashing colors in there: red, black, brown, blue, green, yellow, purple, orange, pink and then a whole lot of mud.



It's actually quite a lovely sweater- very Voguey and stylish, but the complicated cables going up the sleeves were lost and it looked like it was knitted with more than one dyelot as there were sections that were darker then others. I was commissioned to overdye this.



I got to work mixing dyes. I knew I'd have to go much darker to hide some of the dark browns and reds, so I chose to do a dark blue with some red undertones.

Since it was alpaca, I was super careful about stirring and agitating it. Once it sucked up all the dye, I left it in the dye pot overnight to cool before attempting to rinse it.

Voila! A new sweater emerged in a classy-ass navy blue, with darker shades taking place of the barfy brown and black.



Cables usually get lost when you use darker colors, but compared to the busybody yarn this started out as, you can now actually see the cables clearly.



Ahhhh, much better now.