Monday 15 July 2013

Building the stash at Cambridge


At the recent Cambridge Creative Fibres exhibition I indulged myself in some beautiful random dyed sliver from Lyn Walsh of Fibres to Go. I had seen her colourway, Paua, before and couldn't wait to get some. The colours are taken from the inner shell of the New Zealand paua or abalone.

I bought 300 g of merino (80%) and silk (20%) dyed predominately in blues, turquoise and green with splashes of pink.  I've decided to spin the sliver my version of fine then Navaho (chain) ply the singles.

I was half way through spinning the first length when I had an idea. If I wanted longer lengths of a colour I could spin from either end of each 100g skeins whenever the colours at the ends were the same. So I've decided to use the yarn I've already spun for sleeves and the rest for areas of knitting that have more stitches.

Another length that begged to come home with me was this one of 19 micron merino dyed in jewel colours. At this stage I think it will likely become a scarf.

My final purchase was a 0.7 kg share in a white alpaca fleece from Ridgedale Alpacas in Katikati. The soft locks are long and have a lovely crimp. I'm looking forward to washing, dyeing and spinning alpaca for the first time.

one lock of alpaca

Sunday 14 July 2013

Dyeing Noro style

I fell in love with a Noro Jacket pattern. It was knitted in garter stitch using alternate double rows of Silk Garden sock yarn. For night after night I searched the net looking for the colours that matched those in the photo in the Noro magazine. I managed to purchase 3 balls of one colourway from Laughing Hens in England but I mismanaged the purchase of the second colourway and finished up with balls that didn't suit the first ones. Grrrrrr.

I was determined to get the colourway I wanted and it was clear I would have to dye it myself. I had several cones of white Perendale yarn that I could use. I carefully wound the first Noro colourway onto my niddynoddy. Next I counted the number of turns for each shade until I reached the end of the first repeat. One repeat was a staggering 100m. Luckily the knitting pattern had a large photo of the back so I could work out the sequence of colours for the colourway I wanted which was:
pale grey       18m
pale mauve   12m
deep mauve  12m
turquoise        8m
deep mauve  12m
pale mauve   12m
dull gold       14m
cream           12m

I knew it was about 25m from one end of our house to the other so I set up, or rather set sideways, a chair at each end to use to wind the yarn. Altogether I wound 800m which amounted to 250g. I put various coloured ties on the skein to indicate the different colours.

 
Then I did some challenging chaining of the sections that were to be dyed the same colour, worked out the colours and did the dyeing. It worked.
 Dryed and dyed skein below

All that remained was to put the yarn back on the two chairs and wind it up. Luckily my friend, Catherine was here to help. It took two of us. One to walk the 800m while winding the yarn on the ball winder and the other to separate the yarn being wound from the rest of the skein as dyeing had very slightly felted the strands together. My only concern was that once the yarn was dyed it looked fatter than the Noro Silk Garden Sock however the two colourways are knitting together well.
You can see one of my dyed complete colourways on the back starting on the left with deep mauve and ending at white.
 


Fractal waistcoat

Here is the finished waistcoat. The superwash Polwarth was soft and springy. My grandson loved the colours and the teddybear buttons.

 
Here is Sam wearing it. He looks more than happy.
 

I liked the way the bands of colour showed in the knitting.