Spinning fine

First of all, here is the progress on the first sock knitted with the kettle dyed yarn from my last post. There is diagonal patterning, and if I'd used different size needles or more or fewer stitches, it would be different. I'm using a 2.5mm needle and 72sts. It's growing on me.

I've been swatching and ripping a lot lately, indecision rules, it seems. Why do I have so much trouble finding a sweater pattern to knit? I'm not short of choices, but nothing is calling out to me. I suspect I'm going to be designing my own.

As a bit of a change, I dyed some merino/silk blend tops which I treated myself to a while ago.


I've made a start with the spinning, and it seems to want to be spun fine, so that's what I'm doing. I'm aiming for a 2 ply maybe for a lace scarf. This fibre is very soft with a lovely sheen from the silk and I managed not to felt it when I dyed it.

This wasn't the case for this red wool. I had to work quite hard to predraft this because it had become a bit matted, even though I had been quite careful not to agitate it or thermally shock it. Still, I ended up with almost 300m weighing 160g of 2 ply subtly shaded red yarn. Now to decide what to do with it.

Put the kettle on

I've been wanting to try kettle dyeing for a while, and I'm nearly ready to start some more socks, so I had a go at kettle dyeing an undyed skein of sock yarn. It was fun but unpredictable. The first thing was to soak the yarn in a weak washing up liquid solution, while mixing up the dyes. I used five different shades of acid dyes in the red, pink and yellow part of the spectrum. Having given the yarn a rinse I squeezed out most of the water and put it in the pot with some hot water, (just enough to cover it) I added some vinegar at this point, to help the dye to stay where it was put. Then it's a case of adding one colour at a time, waiting until it's been soaked up before adding the next.





Afterwards it's a case of applying heat, in this case I brought it up to nearly boiling point for about 15 minutes. The results are a bit more pink than I wanted, but I like the randomness of it.


I'm just wondering if I should overdye the pinkest bits, because I don't know if I'm brave enough (I've never been someone who wears very bright colours) to wear socks made from this. But then you can't even see the socks when they're worn because they're covered by shoes and trouser legs. Oh well, if I don't like them, I can always dye the finished socks something darker. I'm really looking forward to finding out what they'll be like.