Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Weird yarn

Well, I thought and thought and played with dying with Koolaide and ended up with some wild colors (see posts below -- may have been last month)... anyway, I think I've come up with a way to use all the colors to make a worsted weight yarn that I can knit into either mittens or a hat.

It will be the ugliest pair of mittens or hat anyone has every seen, but it will be mine made from scratch (well, short of shearing, washing and combing the wool). I have 8 ounces of wool set aside. Four ounces are in the wild Koolaide colors of orange, red and lime green (think sherbert) and the last four ounces are the black and white that I purchased from Sheep's Shed Studios.

I decided not the blend the colors but to alternate. So I have about four or five yards of the green. Then four or five yards of black and white went on the spindle. Then I added about four yards of yellow. Then B&W. Then Red. Now I'm getting ready for another layer of B&W.

Of course the dilema will come when I have to decide if or how I'm going to ply this stuff. I can leave it as a single. Which I might do to preserve the stripes. Or I might ply with a straight b&W OR I might lose my mind entirely and ply with a second ball of the same stuff and HOPE it comes out okay. OR I might risk divorce and find some nice black roving and order just enough (like four ounces) to spin up to ply with the whole thing.

I wonder if I could get a nice deep black color with Procion dye or some kind of acid dye from Dharma trading company and overdye this black and white so I end up with a more solid colored black?

1 comment:

Abigale said...

One option that you should know about that is perfect for plying to preserve color stripes is Navajo plying. Basically you start off with a slip knot and then finger chain looooonnnnngggg loops which are twisted (plied) together in the opposite way from your singles (usually clockwise).

Do a google search, or I think there was a good article in a recent Spin Off, which might be at their website (interweave.com)... have fun with the spinning - I love it, and spin just about every day.

HTH!

Abi