Sock Dying Extravaganza (party)

SOCKS.

Last tuesday we finally had our sock dying night. Instead of meeting at our usual Club for knitting night, we gathered at mine for an evening of winding, eating (and drinking) and dying. My friends had never dyed anything before and had asked me how I did it. We started with 10 balls of elann sock it to me 4 ply sock yarn in natural. Each 50 gram ball is 210m, 75%superwash wool and 25 nylon for durability. It takes 2 balls to make a pair of socks (knit on 2.5 mm needles) and each ball costs around $2.50. Perfect price for me and my newby dyers.

We started by taking the balls and winding them into skeins. The photo shows 2 swifts, one umbrella style (mine) and one antique winder (Susan's). You can see Susan's moves so fast, that the yarn is a blurr. Wow. When we had 5 skeins (2 balls in each) done, we paused for some food and wine, then setup the kitchen for dying.

Plastic covered everything and I mixed the dyes (I used Rit as it is readily available in this area). Then they wet the skeins and lay them on the plastic. With sponge paintbrushes, off they went. We ended up with 5 skeins, all with different colour combinations. What a blast. All skeins were then rinsed thoroughly and put to dry. The last word...remember the long winding of the self striping yarn from here... The end result is four colours, each 10 feet long, which will result in approx. one inch stripes when knit into socks! Yellow, blue, tan and burgundy.

Cool.

Winter Wonderland

It is March. almost spring really, and we have made it through the worst winter storm of the year - of the century- and now there is only the clean up.... Here is Rick, shovelling the driveway, and a photo sent by my favorite Aunt in Ottawa that expresses our sentiments at this point.

ENOUGH already.

On a knitting note, I am almost finished the next project, the Superwash Bamboo vest. Touch and Go if there will be enough yarn for the ribbing to finish it off, but I love a little suspense and have a Plan B if I get snookered.

The yarn dying party with my fellow knitters of the StCG&CC Knitters, will be Tuesday, and I am doing a little preliminary work. First is the winding of the sock yarn to make the self striping socks. It involves winding the sock yarn into a 40 foot loop skein. I use this wonderful peg board originally used for weaving... to make long warp strands. The idea is that you tie it off into 10 foot sections and dye each section a different colour. Photos will follow Wednesday...

More Dying this Weekend

Quiet weekends call for yarn dying. I had some balls of Cashsoft Baby DK, from Rowan, and it is a yarn I LOVE in a colour I HATE. It was a sort of pinky beige, neither rose or tan, but kind of yuck. Of course the price was amazing and on the website it looked like a rose, but in person, meh. So I finally skeined the 7 balls on the swift and dyed the lot a wine and denim colour, and this is what it looks like now. I like it now, and will have to decide what to knit with it....





Here also is the photo of the sock yarn from last week, in the dried state.





Our Golf Club Knitters are reviewing some books (fiction) about knitting. There is the Knitting Circle, the Friday Night Knitting Club and Knitting under the influence. I will keep you posted as to how many needles up or down they are rated!

I have also joined the HUGE community of Ravelry, and enjoying the groups, reading what everyone else is knitting and the photos of all the wonderful finished projects. What a great site.

What did Chris do on Family Day?

This being the first Family Day in Ontario history, I have an extra day off (two in a row instead of the usual one in a row...) Since it was a lousy rainy day out, the afternoon was spend dying sock yarn... I took 2 balls of sock it to me yarn from elann, in natural cream, and wound it onto my swift to make a loose skein. I attach the end of one ball with a knot to the other so that the skein is 100 gms and one skein will make 2 socks any size (usually I have some left over).

I got some liquid dyes and powder dyes, (Rit) to see which are easier and I think I like the liquid best, but it is harder to find the colours. I use plastic cups (left over from Christmas) and mix one tablespoon of powder or 2 tablespoons of liquid to about a quarter cup of fairly hot water in each cup. There are good instructions on the Rit site. I used 8 colours for this sock. After I soaked the yarn in very warm water, I wrung out most of the water, and laid it in a circle on a plastic bag (big garbage bag split open). Then I drizzeled the dyes at two or three spots randomly around the yarn, leaving a small white space between the dye spots. After using all the dyes, I covered the wet yarn with the sides of the plastic bag and let it sit for about 20 minutes. At the end, it looked very muddy, but upon rinsing the separate colours emerged and softened, and some mixing of colours where they met made many more than eight colours around the skein! I like it.

I know some kids would expect their mom's to be baking cookies on Family Day, and cooking a big meal or something, but my son, who was visiting from Toronto as he had a day off, looked at the yarn floating in the kitchen sink, then went for leftovers in the fridge. All was normal.