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.

Making Ugly Knits Pretty

I'm not a huge fan of dyeing or over-dyeing entire garments. It presents too many challenges that apartment dwellers find hard to overcome. Usually, you need a pretty big dyepot in order to get the dye evenly distributed. Like a vat. I have a stockpot that is at least a 12 quart, and it's not really big enough to do a sweater. The second issue is the seams. Any place where the garment has a seam, it will be harder for the dye to get to. You'll end up with really funky strips of the original color any place you have stitching.

Saying that, I thought this garment was a good candidate for the dye pot:



Oh, the horror.



Someone (a non-knitter, specifically) had given me 4 different colored skeins of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece in rather Easterish colors. This was waaay back in 2004. I found a pattern that called for 2 skeins, with two strands of yarn held together. So I picked out the two skeins that were the most complimentary and used those together- a pale blue-green and a carnation pink. That is how this monster was born.

I never wore it because of the hideousness and awfulness. Plus, because the yarn was mostly cotton, I needed special Procion dyes.

Finally, over the summer, I took it out and decided to dye it. Procion dyes need no heat to set- just a day or two to cure. Running the stove for hours in summertime is never a valid option. After soaking the tee in washing soda, I mixed the dyes and got a pretty bright raspberry pink that was saturated enough to cover the existing color. I laid the wet garment out on layers of saran wrap and hand-painted the dye on using an application sponge. Once it was saturated with dye, I wrapped it up in the saran wrap and let it sit for a day.



The results were nothing but sweet.



The dye covered the former heinous color evenly and with no hint of the monster that lurks beneath. It's cheery and summery and wonderful.



Because there were no seems at all on this garment, I didn't have any trouble at all getting the dye where it needed to be. It was almost too easy, really.



The specs:

The pattern is the Ballet Tee from Teva Durham's book Loop-d-Loop. I used 2 skeins of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece held together. I don't remember the needle size, but it was probably whatever she recommended in the pattern. It was a super simple pattern worked completely in the round.

FO- Double-Thick Mitts

Here are the mittens that kicked off my A-Z Stashdown project:



I finished them more than a month ago. We had an unseasonably chilly spring day yesterday and for the first time in weeks, I felt like donning a pair of mittens for a few minutes.



And boy, they are toasty. The entire mitten is double-stranded throughout and I used size 0 needles for some dense fabric, but with very little bulk. They are a bit snug on my hands, but they are destined to be gifted to someone with slightly smaller paws so they should fit perfectly.



The Arlan Aarwetta yarn is not terribly soft. It's a nylon/superwash wool blend that was splitty and it dried my hands out...I went through a lot of hand creme while making these. I took a half skein of the beige yarn and overdyed it a dark, saturated red so I could do the colorwork. These should last forever- the yarn is super sturdy and not a pill or weak spot in sight. This yarn would make excellent socks as it seems like it would be years before a darning needle would be needed.



I loved the braided details and picot edge on the cuffs. It was a little finicky, but it really makes the mitten.

The specs: I used a bit over 2 skeins (440 yards total) of Arlan Arwetta sock yarn. This is a Swiss yarn that is rumored to be discontinued but in department stores in Switzerland it seems to be the main sock yarn choice still. I did these on 2 circs that were size US 0 after much trial and error involving dpns. The pattern is by Adrian Bizilia from "The Knitters Book of Yarn", which has a plethora of great patterns and sage advice regarding choosing the right yarn for a project.

I'm off to the post office now to mail these out. Unseasonable, yes, but I'm sure they will get some use in six months from now.

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.

Simply Marilyn

After the Espresso Sweater, I needed to cast on for a bit of instant gratification. I had been eying the Simply Marilyn sweater for a while- it uses a chunky weight yarn and has a simple cable.



I'm doing some modifications- more waist shaping (naturally) and I'll do something with the funky neckline. That pink is a little too girly-girl for me, so I stash dove and came up with something a bit less pretty.



It's some RYC Soft Tweed by Rowan. It actually started out looking like this:



The "Oatmeal" colorway was reminding me of something that might be found in a cat litter box. The price was right, so I decided to try and overdye it with henna and alkanet. Much better now.

Here's the lack of progress so far:



See the stitch holder I skewered it with? That's the point where I stopped doing the six row cable and somehow managed to start doing a 4 row cable and managed not to notice. Whoopsie. I frogged back to about 6 inches of knitting, but since it's chunky yarn, that's not as traumatic as I thought it would be.