International Threads

The thing about hanging out on international sites like Ravelry is that you get to hear about all the fantastic yarns of the world. You try some of these wonderful international yarns, for example Cascade 220, and you realise what all the fuss is about. This is compounded somewhat when you come across 5 knots in a ball of Rowan (by the way i found a knot in the second ball as well, 6 knots total).

So you're buying all this wonderful yarn and then...what happens when you find an amazing yarn that you just can't get at home, no matter how hard you scour the internet? Worse, a whole range of yarns and the only website who deals in it won't, not can't, won't ship to your country? Knit Picks range of yarn is one such example. But yay! I've found a UK supplier. A UK supplier of Knit Picks Yarn.

Thanks to Great British Yarns (the name is ironic considering Knit Picks is an American brand, please don't stop stocking it because of that) i am now the proud owner of 3 skeins of Gloss Sock in Midnight and 4 Skeins of Gloss Lace. Yesssssss. What's even better is that delivery has been SO quick both times i've ordered, i won't hesitate to go back for more.

So if you've ever hankered after a go of some Knit Picks yarn, now is your chance. Good on ya GBY!

Off-a-travellin'

I'm jetting off to Germany for three days tonight with work. I can't imagine there'll be much time for knitting, in fact, i'm looking forward to the break a little bit. The socks i'm knitting are giving me hand cramp (i've decided i really hate that yarn more than ever) so i'll be giving myself a rest.

Get this though, the Wollmeise store, is ONLY 90 minutes drive away from where i'm going. And i will be there on a friday (the store only opens on a Friday and Saturday)... The chances are slim that i'll get there (since i'm supposed to be crossing the border to Alsace in France and back that day) but i'm damn sure going to bust a gut to try. The amount of time it takes to get back to Stuttgart airport from the shop is going to be carefully calculated.

For anyone wondering what the deal is with Wollmeise, this link will show you all the colours. Oh the pretty colours.

New Squish

Ugh i'm so excited i feel sick. Is it unnatural to feel this elated about buying yarn?

I have just bought some sock yarn from Violet Green. Sock yarn i have been eyeing up for a loooonnnnggg time. You see this is what you do when you don't have a lot of money. You fantasise about buying something for quite a while in order to make the purchase feel bigger and more significant. If you do it right, sometimes you can even make yourself foam at the mouth (there's an attractive thought).

Every time i visited the website i saw the sock yarn slowly disappearing and rather than take the risk that the skeins i wanted might disappear, i decided to just jump in and do it since I still had some birthday money left over.

I have bought two skeins of beautiful hand-dyed yarn:

Satyr (image copyright Violet Green)

Kingfisher (image copyright Violet Green)

Anyone who has seen the wedding photos will know that the blue of the Kingfisher skeins matches the blue of my wedding colours perfectly, so this way i will have a little reminder of my big day in the form of a hat, or a neckerchief, or a pair of socks, whatever fits best.

Dyeing wool with food colouring Experimentation

I dyed some more wool at the weekend using food colouring again. I wanted to have a go on some nice plain white sock wool after the attempt at dyeing the recycled sweater yarn. I got all inspired by the colours in Zauerball Crazy Tropical Fish which has lovely tones of blue-green, yellow, orange and red. The result was quite heathery in places which is not particulary what i was aiming for, i wanted graded colour but i didn't really want the dye to stick as quickly to the skeins as it did, leaving white sections.

Possibly it might be something to do with a few factors. this time there was

• Much more vinegar than last time in the soak water
• I don't think the saturation of the food colour in the water was as good
• the amount of soak time the skein got was much less compared to when i dyed the jumper yarn

I'll be doing a lot more experimenting in the next couple of months with varying amounts of colouring, vinegar, soaking time to see what effect it has on the outcome of the yarn.

The method i used to dye these skeins is below.

I'm quite pleased with this skein but wish there wasn't so much heathering.

This skein is much too orange for my tastes. I like the orange but don't want the full skein this way. believe it or not this should have been orangey-red but that didn't exactly work did it. So i'll be dip dyeing a section a darker red. Maybe the dip dyeing will avoid the heathering.

How did I do it? Read on!

1. Skein the yarn however you wish.
2. Soak the yarn in 1 and a half litres of water mixed with half a litre of white vinegar in a bowl or bucket. Press down into the liquid until it's fully submerged. Make sure none of it is pokeing above the surface. Leave for 1 and a half hours.
3. Prepare dye solutions as you fancy. I used about half a teaspoon of wilton colouring gel per 400ml water which was enough for the blue-green, but not for the red, hence the bright orange colour.
4. See this post for the method of handpainting
5. Steam for 60mins in a veg steamer

Next time i'll be having a go at dip dyeing!

Dyeing yarn with food colouring (on recycled sweater yarn). A journey.

On saturday i decided to do something i'd been dying to do for a long while. I went out charity shop shopping for a wooly jumper. "Que?" i hear you ask. Well, the jumper was not for me to wear. I've been reading all kinds of funky tutorials over the past few months about unraveling jumpers. But why? Well, a charity shop ("thrifted" if you're in the U.S) jumper (sweater) is a reeeeeeaallly cheap source of yarn. You can get maybe 800 yards of yarn out of the right jumper.

If you want a good tutorial on ripping up jumpers for yarn, see here. She explains it way better than i could so i won't even try to tute.

So i found this fairly disgusting jumper for £4.49 with a tag that states it is Pure Lambswool. Well that's gold mine right there. I Hated the colour though, some kind of insipid heathered baby blue. Ew. So i decided that it was my time to dye. This is what i'm going to show you. How i went from this

To This:

What You'll Need:

• A Bucket
• White Vinegar (lots)
• Water
• Food Colouring of your choice
• Cling Film
• Steamer/Microwave

You can also do this with new yarn that you've bought from a shop. Just make sure the yarn is a plain, white or cream yarn. It's worthwhile to mention that the lighter your yarn, the more successful you'll probably be with dying and also the more "clean" your colour will be. The colour i used was Violet, but it came out mauve in areas and purple in others because i dyed over blue yarn.

First step. Skein the yarn, you can find tips on how to do this on Youtube. The longer your skein the longer your colour repeats can be. I used the edge of the table for my skeining. Next, soak the skein in a mixture of white vinegar and tepid water. I'm all kinds of nuts and therefore i have a large stash of white vinegar that i use for cleaning, softening towels in the washing machine and pickling stuff. The first time i dyed, i used about 5 parts water to 2 parts vinegar, but the next time i dye i will use more vinegar. The vinegar helps the food colouring to stick better, opening up the fibers and scales in the wool.

Leave to soak for at least an hour, over night if you can wait that long. After soaking, lift out the skein and squeeze out the vinegary water. If your yarn is superwash you don't need to worry too much about felting, but if you have new yarn that says to handwash only or your yarn is from a jumper that tells you to handwash only, be very careful not to agitate the yarn too much, you don't want it to felt and leave you with a lump of yarn you can no longer separate. So squeeze (don't wring) until damp.

Lay out a load of cling film in a circle and lay your damp yarn on top

Mix up your desired colours. I bought food colouring gels from Hobbycraft (i swear they stay in business because of me) so i diluted them in vinegary water. If you buy the watery ones ready mixed from the supermarket then you probably won't need to dilute them, but stick a couple of drops of vinegar in them for good measure.

I used probably the worst colours for photo purposes EVER. Violet and black. Can you distinguish between them? No. Is the second photo pointless? Yes.

So i decided to do two sections violet...

And two sections black...

Trust me, there were separate colours.

Then i wrapped the whole lot up in a yarn sausage encased in cling film and transferred to my steamer. Now. My steamer is pretty rubbish, so unfortunately placing the yarn sausage in the bottom basket was not ideal because the bubbling water spilled into my sausage and diluted the black dye. This left me with a dye job i was unhappy with, so rather than spend time trying to love the crappy look of the faded black, i decided to just re-dye it violet some more. So i repeated the process again, steaming for an hour this time in the second tier of the steamer. Alternatively, wrap your sausage and whack it in a microwaveable dish on high for 15 secs. Remove it and allow to cool. Blast it for another 15 secs. Repeat once more.

After steaming i took the basket off the heat and left it to cool. Don't run cold water on anything. There is more felting misery to be had by running cold water on hot yarn. When the sausage is cold enough, remove the cling film and rinse in a little cold water. Squeeze the yarn (don't wring!) and hang it somewhere away from cats, kids & dogs to dry.

Once your yarn is dry, twist it into a twisted skein, stand back and admire. Maybe you can even shout "I made that!"

So i'm not 100% overjoyed with the effect i got, but i blame it on the somewhat damaged yarn, the original blue colour and the rubbishness of the steamer. However, tonight i have new, clean white yarn soaking in vinegar ready to be sacrificed for the greater dyeing good. More later this week.