More Batches of Yarn Dyeing

I did two bunches of yarn dyeing this weekend. This makes my second & third batch of hand dyed yarns.

Second Batch

I wanted to do a yarn that was self patterning & stripping in red & black with some variations on the red.

The good news is that I think it came out pretty well. The red is bright with a good deal of depth. The two other reds I mixed look good too. It worked out well.

I also loved the warping board. Paul made it for my birthday. The design is taken from Scout's site. It helped lay things out. I am not sure if it saved any time, but I think it might have. I didn't time it. But it was certainly a lot easier to lay out. And it took up so much less space than the long skein method. So I am happy with it.

I did it with the Dharma Fiber Reactive Procion Dyes again. The red is the fire red. I really like it a lot.

The down side is that there are a couple spots where I didn't get the dye deep enough into the yarn. Though overall, it actually looks pretty good. I think when it is knit up, it will look okay. And heaven knows, the variation might be nice.

I am curious to see how it looks when it is knit.

Third Batch

I think the color in the photos is a bit off. I have tried tweaking it, but it isn't working very well. The colors don't seem as light as it looks in the photos. It is deeper.

But I do admit, the blues were lighter than I anticipated. They were supposed to be deeper, more midnight. I really think the cyan dye looks darker when it is painted on the yarn than it does when it is washed. I should just get a blue I want and use that more.

That said, I still really like the way it came out. It is the 100% bamboo yarn by Sarah's Yarns. It is pretty interesting. I really can't wait to see how it knits up.

The bamboo definitely takes the dyes different than the cotton. It seems like less of the color holds onto it. But there is this shimmer to it that the cotton doesn't have which makes it so lovely.

I did this batch a lot more free form. I decided that for a couple reasons. One was that I didn't want to reskein the yarn. I figured it came in a skein and it would be easier to just use it as it was skeined.

The other was because I am really not sure how this will knit up. I tried a sample of it. It feels amazing. But I do have some doubts about how it will work for socks. The site says it is great for socks. I am just simply not sure it will have enough give. So if I need to frog any socks I try to make with it, I would rather have it in a color and design where there won't be an issue about the patterning to the yarn. The colors are just large enough to make little spots, not whole lines. So it could look very interesting.

Doing Two Batches

I think it will be a while before I decide to do two batches at once. The only way I might reconsider is if they are the same yarn & I can wash them together. It took eons to wash both sets of yarn the next day.

Part of this is about hand washing & rinsing. It is time consuming. I keep wondering if there is something I am not doing correctly. But I don't think so. I think it is just about how long it takes to wash out the dye that is on the yarn and not in it. It took about 5 hours between the two batches. Heaven knows, I think the dyeing only took about that long.

Reskeining the Yarns

I hope that I somehow goofed big time with the warping board. Because trying to get the red & black batch of yarn out of the tied skein into something I could make into balls what a nightmare. I seriously spent 6, yes 6 hours trying to untangle it and get it into something useable. *sigh* I suspect it was a couple factors.

I am really thinking about a different design for the warping board. I spoke with Paul about it before my birthday. Thing is he was already making me Scout's design. He did offer to make a different design for me. I have some ideas and I think the variations I want to do will make things a lot easier in the future. I should do a drawing and post it for suggestions.

The good thing is that both skeins are now in pretty little center pull balls! Woohoo. I got a ball winder. Knitting-warehouse.com as them for $24. I figured it would actually be more useful with the reskeining from the warping board. But because of the tangles in the yarn, that didn't actually happen. But it is actually great being able to make balls so quickly. I think it will help once I figure out what's up with the skeining issues.

More Pics to Come

The camera is literally coming apart. The battery flap is broken. So we have to hold it shut to take the pics. Most of the time Paul takes the pics as his fingers are strong enough to close it (he took the pics I have).

I took more photos with my phone. But there is some weirdness with my Palm. It won't actually transfer the photos.

I want to scoot home. I hope to have a resolution on the photo issue tomorrow. Maybe I will post more then. I took pics of some works in progress (WIPs) that I want to share too, including the socks from the first batch of self patterning yarn.