I did get some dying done this weekend as I’d planned. I started Thursday night dying some yarn I got last year at the Webs booth at Stitches. It’s about 1900 yards of wool that was originally a grayish color. I’ve over-dyed it red (Schucks' brand kool-aid) and it came out exactly as I’d hoped. It’s a sort of faded brick red that will someday become a gansey-type sweater.

I love the colors and the effects of the Jacquard Acid dyes and I was very pleased with how easy they were to use. This is Chartreuse. Very Chartreuse. I’m inordinately in love with both this and with the golden lace weight below.

This was done in the remains of the orange (mix of yellow and vermillion Jacquard dyes) from below. Somehow the first batch soaked up almost all the red and left this beautiful gold for this last batch.

These were soaked in tea bags. I really love how they came out.

The lace weight

And the fingering weight

These are skeins of superwash fingering weight that I thought I would do a bright mix. They came out a little messy. For these I had 2 pots. One with yellow and one with chartreuse. I hung the skeins over the 2 pots with an end in each. Then, once those were done, I rinsed them, put a plastic mixing spoon through each end and then hung the middle of the skein into the orange mixture. I wasn’t completely happy with the colors so I did a final pass with them through another yellow pot. That made it better but it also made a bit of the mess. Next time I would do the whole skeins in the yellow and then hang it over the 2 pots, one with green and one with orange. I think that would have been a much better way to do it. Live and learn, right? I still think these will make interesting socks.

I do have 2 more skeins that aren't quite finished. I did them with theWilton cake icing dyes. One of the things I love about using these for dying yarn is that you never know what you're going to get. I started out with soaking the skeins in tea and then I was going to use a brown and a light blue to variagate them. Well, they came out as a sort of high desert sunset. The brown was beautiful but the blue broke up into blues, purples, pinks and other colors. The problem was that the parts that had been soaked in tea lost most of that color so I'm going to need to do another color along that side. I think they'll be pretty but I need to decide what colors I need to use to finish them.

Rats.

I was so pleased with myself for finishing the Norwegian gloves. Then when I looked at the post, what was the first thing I saw?

Yep, a great big fat mistake in the beginning of the first glove. Argghhhh…..

I guess the silver lining is that I get to make a new pair and customize them for my Mom. Good for Mom.

I’ve designated this weekend as a weekend to dye. I’ve got a gob of natural colored yarn that I’ve been meaning to dye for a long time. I have a class on beginning lace in early December at the Community College here and I will need to have some yarn for students to buy should they not bring their own. Instead of just getting boring old yarn, I thought it would be nice to do some hand dyed for them. The class is going to be based on working a sampler scarf so this will give them scope to go all out!

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done any dying so I’m pretty excited about getting into it again. I’ll post pictures once I start getting some colors working.

One more thing

It's the old, old story. Girl goes to straighten up stash, girl finds unfinished project, girl finishes project, girl forgets about straightening up stash.

Yep, caught up in the old vortex again. But look what I found at the edge of the stash. I can't even remember when I started these gloves (Nancy Bush - Norwegian gloves from Piecework online download) but it was probably as I was in the midst of the Danish sweater. I started it with other colors, couldn't figure out the fingers the way the pattern was written (definitely not a beginner's pattern in any way, shape or form unless you're a beginner savant). I remember I put it away for a while. Then I decided to start again with the colors it called for and, again, got the pinky finger done and then was probably too distracted to think through the pattern.

Well, this time I was determined to do it. How often is it like this. You stare at a pattern from anywhere from a few minutes to a year and it makes no sense and then, one day you're straightening your stash, find it, pick it up and all of a sudden it makes some sort of sense. This time it must have taken because I still didn't think any better of the pattern but it made sense and I actually breezed right through. All I have to do now if the final thumb and the finishing work on the second one. These are made out of KnitPicks Palette yarn in dark grey, natural and red. If you haven't heard about the red knitted into Norwegian patterns I'll tell you one day. It has to do with the Norwegian resistance in WW2.