Adventures with YarnInformation about everything to do with yarn, knitting, fiber arts, sheep…

Above is my current work in progress. I’m calling it the Quad Blanket as it features four colors. The blanket’s pattern is a simple log cabin style, instructions of which I found on this page about a third of the way down. Simply summarized, starting with a center block, you knit an addition, rotate the piece 90 degrees, knit the next addition, and continue till the blanket is the size you want it to be, or you run out of yarn.

The inspiration for this was really just me wanting to use up the various small scraps of yarn I’ve created and dyed during the past half year. One benefit this has is that the blanket has many different textures and yarns, I enjoy the variety. I started by knitting up the blue/grey yarn made in August into a square just to see how it would come out. Then I found the log cabin instructions and decided to use the square for the core. Then I added on these pink scraps, followed by some green I apparently dyed but didn’t photograph.

At this stage I knew my next color was going to be yellow, but I hadn’t made a yellow yarn yet… thus I decided to document my yarn making process via the yarn dyeing tutorial I posted last week. At that time I also dyed up the rest of my handspun stock in blue and pink for the next layers of the blanket.

My next challenge will be the next green segment. I have some dyed already but it’s green/purple, not solid green. I think I want to keep the solid color motif going, so I’ll be taking some time to work on processing the washed fleece into yarn. I guess that will be the next tutorial here!

Here are the new yarns I dyed yesterday, including the yellow one featured in my yarn dyeing tutorial.

Their purpose is to be added to my Craft Room Knitted Log Blanket which will be the subject of my next blog post!

By the way, the picture of the red yarn shows how critical making those figure eight tied loops are – I felt lazy and only put in one, and now I have a huge mess of yarn on my hands! This will be fun to untangle…

Here is a tutorial I’ve written up, illustrating one of the methods I use to dye the yarn I spin (from the Shetland fleeces bought in the summer). It uses food dyes, so you do not need to purchase dedicated equipment. For more pictures of the process please visit my Flickr Yarn Dyeing album.

Equipment

Pictured in the two pictures above is all of the equipment you’ll need. Above are some spare pans for rinsing and soaking, jars for each color, the yarn itself, citric acid (can be bought online, I found mine at Bulk Barn), and food dyes. You will also need a pot to steam the jars in, and a rack to elevate the jars.

Preparation

Using yarn scraps of another texture, divide your skein roughly into two (or three if it’s really large), weave the yarn scrap to form a figure eight, and tie it together. This ensures the skein is loose enough to let the dye permeate completely, and also keeps it organized when moving it around. Using the different texture makes it really easy to find these figure eights later on when they’re the same color as the rest of the yarn!

Create an acidic solution using the citric acid and a spare pot. I don’t measure it at all, I simply make it so that it’s acidic when I taste it. Soak the yarn in this solution while mixing the dyes. Note: You can get a different effect if you make the dyes acidic instead of the yarn, and some people let it soak much longer.

Dye Mixing

Mix up your colours in the jars. Here I’ve used a shotglass in which I’ve diluted one small drop of red with water. I used this to change the raw yellow into this golden color. I also mixed another gold that was even deeper than this.

In this tutorial I am not being precise, thus I am not measuring the number of drops of dye I use, etc. If you foresee wanting to replicate the colors you make, it’s valuable to measure the amounts you add. Of course, there’s no guarantee that you can make the same size “drop” each time, or that your technique remains the same! I consider this a part of the art. If you know you want 5 skeins of one pattern, doing them at the same time will give you the best odds of making 5 similar looking skeins.

Note: the amount of water in the dye mix doesn’t really matter, what matters more is the number of molecules of dye. I’ll explain this in a bit.

Dyeing and Steaming

Put the dye jars into the pot and add hot water up to the level of the jar’s contents. Here I’ve dipped each end of yarn into one dye pot, as I wanted to go for a gradient effect. By quickly dipping, only a small number of dye molecules adhere to the wool. I then left a portion of the dipped part in the dye jar to allow the dye molecules to keep adhering and thus deepen the color.

If your skein length is too small to reach the dye in the jars, you can simply add water to the dye jars to bring the level up to where you want it to be. The color will not change, as adding water does not affect the number of dye molecules in the solution – while the dye will look lighter to our eyes, in reality it will result in the same yarn color.

Cover the pot and steam that yarn! For how long? I go for about 10 minutes, checking now and then to change the dip depth and look for dye exhaustion. This is when the jar’s mixture turns clear, and means all of the dye molecules have been absorbed, what you see colorwise is as good as it’ll go (with this mixture). This is what one should strive for, as leftover color mixture means you are using a bit too much raw dye, but in reality the cost of dye is pretty negligible so it’s not much of a big deal to drain it.

Once your yarn is done, transfer it to a draining container and rinse it out. Using hot water, indirectly filling up the container, and being gentle helps to avoid felting and tangling. I gently prod and shake it, and continue until no more color comes 0ut. Then, gently squeeze it out and hang it up on a hanger. I also give it a gentle pull to straighten out any excess twist. The hanger hangs in my bathroom until the yarn is dry, which takes longer for larger skeins of course. I usually give it a few days just to be safe. Then you can reskein it to get a better impression of the yarn, or keep it as is!

Here’s a view of the final yarn ready to dry. You can see the differences in the two yellow/golds, and while the gradient effect was much more muted than I would have liked, oh well, it still looks nice!

This yarn already has a purpose in mind, it’s the next color in my four colour log cabin knit blanket I’m working on. Once this dries out I’ll continue documenting its journey, taking the time to share this very simple yet pretty cool blanket pattern with you!

Sorry for the lack of recent updates, I’ve been very busy purchasing the farm and house pictured above! It’s a wonderful 70 acre property in Eastern Ontario with a small barn (on the left side in the picture above) and quaint house.

Within the coming months I plan on building my own flock of wonderful animals whose fibers I can then turn into wonderful items. I have no doubt I’ll be engaging in tons of interesting adventures in the future, and the fiber-related ones will be documented right here!

This shawl is what I made with the alpaca yarn in the previous post. I ended up leaving it as singles. The real life color is much more amber, though not as amber as in the previous post, certainly not as muted as this shot which used my flash.

As this was my first ever shawl, I chose to keep the pattern dead simple. It’s a Josephine shawl, the pattern is pretty much do a yarn over right before the end of each second row, and knit the rest. This forms a right angle triangle, which rotated, becomes the shawl. I appreciated the simplicity of the pattern, it allowed me to take my knitting around and not having to remember what stage I was at in a pattern.

This also allowed me to test out my stitch markers! I used one to mark a few stitches behind the yarn over increase. This allowed me to knit absentmindedly, but to pay attention when it was time to do something. I learned that it’s very important to have stitch markers that are lightweight (or appropriate in weight to the project and needles at least), which may mean using plastic beads or wood beads in lieu of the prettier and more varied glass beads.

Here is the alpaca yarn I’ve spun up from the roving shown in the previous post. Doesn’t it look so yummy! Once I started spinning, I couldn’t stop until it was all done. A quick soak in warm water and hanging it in my bathroom for a few days has set the twist wonderfully. I will be making this into a lovely warm shawl to take advantage of the insulating nature of the alpaca fiber.

My final choice before the yarn is complete is whether I ply it together or not. If I made it into a 2-ply, the yarn w0uld be more even,  as the thick parts and thin parts would even out. The two ply yarn would certainly be stronger and hold up to more rough wear. Then again, plying it means I would only have around 210 yards to make into a shawl, which might not be enough. I think for now I will go ahead and start knitting the shawl up with the single ply yarn, and after a bit if I don’t like the results, I can undo it and proceed with plying.

Here’s a detailed shot to let you see some of the yarn thicknesses. Also, you can see a few areas of overspun-ness, but far less than my last lacelikeweight yarn! My spinning skills are improving!

Oh my gosh, aren’t they just so cute!!

Over the weekend of September 26th I was able to visit Ballintotas Alpacas, a small family run alpaca farm outside of Arnprior, Ontario. The Rouleau family has been tending  a herd of alpacas for 9 years now, focusing on raising champions and high quality 4H animals as well as high quality fleeces, awards of both are proudly (and rightfully, I may add) displayed. They sell a wide variety of alpaca products, such as gloves, hats, and shawls (including a loose sock for diabetes patients), as well as machine spun yarn and duvets.

The family were great hosts, greeting us when we came in, taking us to the alpacas, sharing a great overview of alpaca knowledge as well as answering any questions we had. The alpacas themselves were gentle and absolute angels (that’s what you get when most of your boys are gelded), many of them loved having rubs and being petted. The one filly who was harnessed up and taken out for us to more closely pet showed absolutely no wildness, even when her foot was brought up. I felt very welcome here, in fact out of all of the Rural Ramble sites I visited, I would say this one was the best!

They had a few bags of alpaca roving for sale, so I picked one up, 100 grams of a light sandy color for $13. I am so looking forward to spinning it up! I think I will make a shawl with it. It is so soft and warm, I almost want to keep it as roving forever… but Mom didn’t like that idea too much

One thing I love about the simple packaging is that it prominently features the alpacas who contributed to the product. Each label features a picture of the alpaca, as well as their name and any awards they’ve won. I immediately felt much closer to the product, especially after petting and snuggling with the alpacas only a few minutes prior. It was very much a similar experience as the one I had at Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm/Hudson Valley Fiber Farm.

And get this, what do you think this artwork is made of? I thought chalk or pastel. Nope, it’s alpaca fiber! The “canvas” is a large wet-felted piece of alpaca felt, and the rest of it is dyed  as needed and needle felted on. What a great idea this is!

All in all, my visit to Ballintotas Alpacas was a wonderful experience. I will keep my eyes on their website for other times when I can go and visit the alpacas!

If you are interested in seeing more alpaca photos, you can see my entire photoset on Flickr.

These are stitch markers that I have made. You can use them to mark places on your knitting needles, more deluxe versions can be left inside the knitting project and removed later.

You can make your own very easily with a few jewelry making supplies and beads. Here is one tutorial that I used in making my stitch markers.

I will be adding my own tutorial for creating stitch markers once I have experimented more.

Above is the amount of yarn I got from unraveling the sweater in the last post, minus one skein of pink which I couldn’t help myself from dyeing, hence it is not in this shot. The total was three skeins of 260-290 yards, two skeins of 205 yards, and one pink skein of 200 yards. Around 1386 yards in total, plus or minus rounding errors. Six balls of yarn for $6.77, $1.13 each skein. That’s a great price!

Sadly I did not take any pictures while I deconstructed the sweater. I will go out and get another sweater soon (luck willing) to make up for this. Once you’ve done it once, it’s very easy to do it again, I’m sure anyone could figure it out as I did. That said, this blog is all about sharing knowledge, so I’ll be posting a tutorial on deconstructing a sweater in the coming week or two.

Sometimes I get the urge to dye, but I don’t want to dye my handspun, and I don’t have a stash of yarn yet. When these times occur, I head out to the thrift store (in my case, Value Village) and look around to see what sweaters they have. I keep my eye out for any labels that have wool/angora/cashmere/etc.

The sweater pictured above cost me $6CDN. It is 90% lambswool, 8% wool, 2% angora rabbit. I will probably get six skeins of wool from it, one for all the pink, one for each sleeve and the back and front, and one small one for the cuffs and trim. It’s so soft!

This is my second sweater I am deconstructing. The first one was a less nice wool, 60% wool/40% acrylic, but it provided me with just under 1200 yards of 2 and 3 ply, and dyed surprisingly nicely: