yarn tootin'

The Winners!

     Bob just helped me draw three names out of the bowl and we have some winners.  I decided to name the yarns with the colorway names suggested by the winner of each yarn.  My three year old nephew suggested Big Ball of String Beaches for the mostly blue yarn and Beaches and More Beaches for the multicolored yarn, and while those were compelling suggestions, Charlie doesn't knit, so I didn't put his name in the bowl.  Sorry Charlie.

The winner of the mostly blue yarn which is now called Blues Clues is Mira.

The winner of the multi colored yarn which is now called Tropical Punch is Becky.

The winner of the Spritely Goods yarn in the Spring is Here! colorway is Catherine.

Thanks to everyone for your nice comments and all of the great colorway suggestions!

It's Not Easy Being Green

This yarn is brought to you by the letter Y, the number 4, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Name that Colorway

     As promised, I'm finally getting around to my Spring Yarn Giveaway.  It's not my blogiversary or my birthday, but it is that time of year.  This time two years ago, I was just learning to knit and it was all I wanted to do.  This time last year, I was fairly obsessed with dyeing yarn and I regularly stayed up way past my bedtime experimenting with various yarns and food dyes.  This year, I'm learning to croshay and if I hadn't been distracted by the dye pot all weekend, I'd probably have my ripple afghan well underway by now.

     I will put the names of everyone who comments on this post into the drawing for all three of the yarn prizes, however, you will be entered twice if you offer a suggestion for a colorway name for one of the yarns I dyed and you'll be entered three times if you offer suggestions for both of my yarns.  The third yarn was not dyed by me and already has a name, so I'm just throwing it in for fun.

Yarn #1:

     This yarn really surprised me.  I didn't think it would look this good all skeined up (I'm still not that great at making skeins, but I'm working on it).  Of the yarns I dyed last weekend, I think it's the best.  These are each 185 yard skeins of superwash 100% merino fingering weight yarn.

Yarn #2:

     This is the yarn I thought I'd like the best, and it's okay, but I find it a little bit too bright.  I think it would make really cute socks for a little girl or someone who likes bright colors.  Again, these are 185 yard skeins of superwash 100% merino fingering weight.

      Yarn # 3 is from Spritely Goods.  The colorway name is Spring is Here! and it's 280 yards of superwash sport weight goodness.

     I'll draw names sometime after noon (CST) on Monday, May 7, so you have until then to either comment or if you're shy, email your suggestions to me at yarntootin at yahoo dot com.

Sneak Peek

     I swear that I'm going to do some sort of yarn contest very soon, but at the moment, some of the yarn in question is wet.  It's been a very crafty weekend around here.  Bob was in Charlotte visiting the other members of the ensemble formerly know as The Dark Horse Quartet, so I decided to take advantage of the empty kitchen and patio and dye some yarn.  About a year ago, I dyed my first yarn using Koolaid and Wilton's food dyes, and I had a great time doing it.  Around the time I found out that I needed to pack up all of my belongings and move to Big Texas, I received my acid dye starter kit (big girl dyes) from Wool2Dye4.  With all of the moving and auditioning and the new house, I forgot all about dyeing yarn.  Almost a year has gone by, and until this weekend I never used the kit.

     I'm still getting the hang of mixing the dyes.  I did a little preliminary reading in Dyeing to Knit and The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook to get some ideas.  The colors that came in my kit are Royal Blue, Turquoise, Daffodil (light yellow), Sunshine (more golden yellow), Fuchsia, Fire Engine Red, and Black.  I probably should have made test skeins, but I'm far too impatient for that.  I wanted to make a bright lime/Kermit the frog green, but I ended up with more of a grass/Oscar the Grouch green.  I think I know how to fix this (less blue), but the color that has me completely stumped is brown.  None of the books tell you how to make brown.  I think that if I add a tiny bit of blue to the orange that I already have it might be brown-ish.  I could also just order a jar of brown dye powder which is probably easier and safer.  If anyone has any hints on how to make brown, please let me know.

     Here is what I've dyed so far.  I think the skeins on the top left are the worst of the bunch.  They may look great all skeined up (there is some purple on the other side that you can't see from the picture), but at the moment, they look a little too Crayola for my taste.  The colors of all of the skeins are much brighter in person (probably too bright), but since it's overcast today they look more muted.  I think the skeins on the top right will look good once they are re-skeined, as will the one below. 

     I used better base yarn for the skeins on top than the skein on the bottom.  Base yarn is very mysterious.  The base yarn used by a particular dyer is almost always a closely guarded secret.  I will tell you that the skeins on top were cream colored Louet Gems before I got my hands on them.  The yarn on the bottom is Kona Superwash from Wool2Dye4.  I like the Louet a lot, but the skeins are small (185 yards) which is a pain, and they're not cheap.  The Kona Superwash seems okay, but I haven't knit with it yet, so I'm not sure.  I don't think I'm going to be the next Scout or Mama E (like I said, I'm way too impatient), but I would like to know where to get some decent base yarn.

     Hopefully this stuff will dry out soon so I can re-skein and admire.  I'm off to mix more dyes and try again.       

Cookie Monster

      This is my favorite so far.  It's exactly the color of Cookie Monster's fur with some darker purple streaks.  It was immersion dyed in the microwave with Wilton's Royal Blue.  The best thing about this skein, other than that it's gorgeous, is that it was so easy to do and I think I could probably repeat it with very similar results. 
     I went to Borders yesterday and picked up Nancie Wiseman's The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques.  I'm almost finished with the knitting part of the baby sweater and as usual, I have no clue how to put the pieces together.  I really hate sewing.  I did not sign up to sew when I started knitting.  I had a two hour lesson on seaming with Peggy in December, but I don't remember a thing.  She got all of my seams started and then they weren't too hard to finish, but starting them myself seems to be a bit of a problem.  Hopefully this book will shed some light.
     Yesterday was the day off.  Musicians typically have Mondays and/or Tuesdays off which is great if you want to wander around in a nearly empty Borders for an hour (which I did), but it's not so great if you want to do anything that normal people do on weekends ( like Maryland Sheep and Wool, for example).  Anyhow, on my day off I also spent a good amount of time browsing on iTunes and I bought a new "CD."  It's rare that I find a CD where I like every track, and so far I'm not skipping any of the songs on Joshua Radin's We Were Here.  It's light and folky and backed up by lots of cello and violin lines with no hard edges whatsoever.  Just my style.  I don't mind hard edges in classical music, but I really do not enjoy anything that rocks too hard when I'm listening on my own time.  Bob calls all of the music I like "James Taylor."  This isn't entirely accurate, but I suppose he has a point. If you tend to like nice, gentle, acoustic folk singers, run, don't walk, to check this disc out.

Valentine and Baby Boy

     Thanks to a comment that Carla left on my last post, I've been trying a new dyeing technique this weekend.  She left links to pictures of yarn that had been immersion dyed with some of the more unstable Wilton's icing dye colors.  I tried Rose Rose first.  The colors on the Wilton's jar lids are printed in English and French, and Rose Rose is different and darker than Pink Rose.  Because Pink Rose produced a splotchy orange, peach, and pink mess the last time I used it, I thought that Rose Rose would also be unstable.  I found that Rose Rose is actually pretty stable and produces a screaming, almost fluorescent pink.  Since this is not what I was going for, I threw a packet of Grape Koolaid into the dye pot, stirred it just a tiny bit, then let it sit and simmer and this is what happened.  I'm calling it Valentine.   

     As usual, I had no idea what I was doing in terms of my technique or dyeing process, but after spending fifteen minutes or so on the Dye-O-Rama blog, I came up with some ideas.  I dyed the Valentine skein on the stove in a stock pot, but I didn't like doing it that way because I'm impatient and it takes too long for pot to cool enough to rinse the yarn and really get a good look at what you've done.  For my second immersion dyed skein, I went back to using the microwave and a big, flat bottomed, Pyrex bowl.  I like the fact that the Pyrex bowl is clear, so I don't get as antsy waiting for it to cool down.  Here's what I did...

1.  Fill Pyrex bowl with 3 parts water (not hot, not cold) and 1 part vinegar, leaving enough room for the yarn.
2.  Add approximately one teaspoon (maybe a little more) of Wilton's Violet (or other unstable color) food dye to the water.  Mix it around a little bit.  I left the globs of dye gel at the bottom of the bowl and I got some really dark purple/blue spots where those globs hit the yarn.  I like this effect very much.
3.  Put the yarn in the bowl and gently push it down with a spoon or potato masher until it is submerged.  I put the yarn in dry, right from the factory, though I suppose you could also soak the yarn first in vinegar and water.  I'm not sure, but I think that using wet yarn would produce less variegation, and variegation is what I wanted with this skein. 
4.  Cook the yarn (and the water and the bowl) in the microwave until the dye bath is clear.
5.  Let it cool, rinse, hang to dry.

      Voila...I'm calling this colorway Baby Boy.  I think it will make very nice socks to go with the baby sweater I'm knitting.  Overall, I like this dyeing technique a lot because it's fast and easy and it's a lot less messy than the other methods I've tried.