Overdyeing

Yesterday I had another dye day out on the deck. Jennifer and I both had some bare yarn and some yarn that needed to be overdyed.

Jennifer hand-painted some KnitPicks Bare Hare yarn using a couple of shades of Gold Ochre. Here, she is measuring out the concentrated dye and water.

As she had two skeins, what she did to one, she did to the other to create the same colourway. After she applied the darkest shade of colour, she diluted it a bit to get a lighter shade of the same colour.

Jennifer also overdyed some light blue laceweight with burgundy resulting in a purplish colour (far left). The other three skeins were KnitPicks Imagination yarn in a lighter green and yellow colourway that she overdyed with varying shades of sapphire blue in three gradations from lightest (on the right to the darkest (third from the right). They are now gradient shades of a teal, green and blue.

I first overdyed some tan-coloured Opal sock yarn. I used chestnut and a couple of shades of spruce. I'm not thrilled with the colours I picked but they'll make acceptable man socks (pictured on the right). The skein on the left is another skein of my handspun which I dyed to somewhat match the two skeins I dyed two weeks ago. The tonal golden yarn in the centre is the norbouillet I bought at the Knitter's Fair. There was quite a bit of VM (vegetable matter) in the yarn but it will be easily picked out while it is being knit. Now to find a pattern for this very special yarn.

For the most part, if you don't like the colour of a skein of yarn, there is always the option of changing the colour.

Cheese!

I have started a shawl using Sparkly Sock yarn from Yvieknits that I purchased at The Gathering in Port Hope back in April.

The pattern is Crescent over Lothlorien by Cordula Surmann-Schmit. I wanted a crescent-shaped shawl with some lace and this one seems to fit the bill. I hope it is big enough. I am doing the pattern as written but now wonder if I should have added more repeats of the plain 'stem' part. We shall see.

I made a mess of winding the ball of yarn and ended up with a huge mess on my hands which took me about 3 hours to untangle the other night. I am leaving it as a hand-wound ball with it unwinding from the outside. Lesson learned - knit from the outside of the ball if the yarn is in any way 'sticky'.

The even-numbered rows are not charted, rather the knitter is instructed to work stitches as presented. However, I am purling the even-numbered rows except for knitting the two-stitch garter stitch border on each side and the two yarnovers on each side. I couldn't be bothered to pay attention to what stitches were presenting themselves on the wrong side and don't believe it will make that much difference in the appearance of the final product. Doing the even-numbered rows as instructed creates what the designer believes to be a 'reversible' shawl but I'm not concerned with that.

I'm hoping it will be appropriate to take on my upcoming Irish knitting tour to wear with my bright yellow coat.

I am on row 13 of 45 of the lace border. It shouldn't take more than a couple of concerted knitting sessions to complete.

Rams and Yowes is almost finished. I needed a break from the 750+ stitches per row of garter stitch. I have about 24 rounds to go before attaching the border to the back of the blanket and concealing all the ends. I may have to order a ball of the shetland black yarn to complete the i-cord edge. I found a distributor of the yarn at the Knitter's Fair. He didn't have the colour I needed at the fair but has it in stock at his store so I know it is easily ordered and shipped.