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Sunday, 18 May 2008

it's all about the self-striping yarns

Let's jump straight to the point, I made self-striping yarn on Friday. For more thorough tutorials on how how actually calculate how big your stripes will be, check out Ysolda or Eunny.

Of course, I've attempted this before in my rather haphazard unscientific way, making a big loop dyeing yarn 3 (1) on my coat tree, dying it in four kool-aid shades, dyeing yarn 3 (3) and knitting it into lovely socks. Socks... in 3-D!!! Luckily for me, I got almost exactly one round out of each colour.

This project isn't for socks, but rather for the Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap (free pattern). When scoping the house for something easy to wind a large loop on, the warp frame used in weaving came to mind, and so my easy version of that was this:

getting a long loop

I didn't actually measure the loop, but I think I got a circumference of between 20-24 feet! The yarn, by the way, is Jaeger Baby 4-ply.

I used the microwave dying method with easter egg dyes, using about half a tablet each for the blue and the purple, and letting everything else hang out in the plate. 1/2 the yarn is blue, and 1/3 is purple, overlapping partly with the blue, and the rest I've left white.

colour number 2

Then I crushed up some of the remaining blue and purple as well as some teal, and sprinkled it on top of the piled up yarns.

coloured sprinkles

Success! Here's what it looks like hung up to dry:

drying yarn

Baby cap to come...

3 comments:

Felicity Ford said...

That's extremely exciting!

I can't wait to see how this yarn looks knitted up. I love home-dyeing.

x

ysolda said...

I love the drawer handle idea! Great yarn too :)

-A said...

Those are great lookin' socks! I just stumbled on your blog and love it! :) as another American living in the UK, it's nice to read your take on things. :)