This has been a rough few weeks, trying to hide this giant sweater
from hubby! But after putting the sleeves on holders and deciding to
steek the chest, it went much faster.
I got to join in the dye-along, even though I’m in the computer geek
department rather than the creative department. But that also means
that I managed to do pretty much everything wrong. It turned out well,
anyway. At least, I like how it is going so far. So for anyone who has
never dyed before, I think it will probably turn out ok, even if you do
everything wrong, like me!
I used 3 different flavors of Kool-Aid to dye my sock blanks –
Watermelon Cherry, Cherry, and Black Cherry. My husband and I are
adopting 3 teenagers, so I wanted to make pink socks for Liza (12), as
that is her favorite color, and red socks for Dasha (14), as that is her
favorite color. And in the interest of fairness, though I’m not sure he
will wear them, I wanted to make dark red socks for Max (16), since red
is also his favorite color, and dark red seemed a bit more macho than the bright red.
When I finished dyeing up my Rainbow sock yarn that I last blogged
about, I was really really excited to start knitting with it RIGHT
AWAY! But you know how it goes with socks..I had to get one of my
billion sock projects finsished before I could think about casting on
another one. So while I waited for a free set of needles, I wound up
the hank, to better admire the color combinations:
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At this point I have two lovely sock blanks. I am going to be knitting with two strands held together for each of my Shape It Scarves from The Knit Stitch by Sally Melville.
Read more »There’s one kind of food-grade dye that I really like to use, but it
can be a little hard to find. Usuallly it’s only available in stores in
the spring.
Easter Egg Dyes!
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The appeal of dying sock blanks is the never-ending possibilities. You can choose to be creative in a linear fashion or be abstract. I sound like an art museum docent. I chose to give linear a try for the blanks I was dyeing for my Shape-It Scarves.
Read more »I’ve been wanting to try my hand at dyeing for a while now. The
thought of the mess, the equipment and doing a really bad job at it kept
me from trying. But, after I found out there was going to be a
dyealong, I thought, hey! Perfect opportunity! Now I can at least
commiserate with others who have also made a giant mess. So, I got some
sock blanks, let myself get inspired, and dove right in.
I decided to try acid dyes, since it’s relatively low-odor and I
could do it indoors (with proper ventilation, of course). That proved to
be an advantageous decision, because when I got ready to dye it was
raining! I got all my supplies together and started the process.
I am SO excited to be participating in our Dye-Along!
Dyeing fiber is one of my recent hobbies, and I’m looking forward to
sharing lots of my experiments with all you talented people! First on
the slate is my sock blank. I mentioned last week that I typically don’t knit socks two-at-a-time,
but a few months ago, I had an inspiration which was too thrilling to
ignore. I wanted a pair of socks that looked good enough to eat:
Well, I’ve made a little progress on my hubby’s sweater. Not nearly
enough, though! I spent all my knitting time this week charting out the
shaping and design of the top, and almost none of it knitting. So it’s
not as far as I’d like it to be!