To Dye For

We came home with three skeins of lovely hand dyed yarn after the group Dye Day Sunday. I have two photos to share with you, both skeins that husband made.

He hand painted this skein of worsted weight wool using blue, red, and yellow dyes. I think they were Gaywool dyes. Here's the result.


This is a skein of dip and dribble dyed (yes, technical terms!) sock yarn. He started by immersing a center pull ball into a vat of natural dye, coreopsis, I think. The result was nasty looking, so he added in drips and dribbles of commercial dyes. This delightful yarn resulted.


I don't have a photo of the yarn daughter dyed. I'll try to post that later in the week.

This yarn was a tremendous hit at the meeting on Sunday:

This is Manos del Uruguay in the colorway Bramble. I'm using it to make this scarf.


Here's detail of the stitch pattern.

I found the instructions on line somewhere. It's very simple. Cast on a number divisible by three. Row 1 is knit one, slip one purlwise, knit one. Knit into the back of the slipped stitch, then pass the slipped stitch over. Row 2 is purl two together then purl one in the first of those purled stitches before dropping the two stitches off the needles. You just repeat those two rows. Easy and gorgeous! I like how this simple pattern shows off the beautiful color and texture in the yarn.

Here are some finished socks, neither pair blocked yet. The first pair belongs to daughter, and yes, they are too big for her. They are made from Regia.

These were not bad to knit, and they are not so bad to look at now that they are finished. I was concerned while knitting them, though, as they didn't look all that great. Daughter is thrilled with them and put them on the second I finished the toe grafts!

The second pair belongs to husband. I hated every minute of working with this yarn. It is Wildfoote by Brown Sheep. This particular yarn split like mad. Husband used a similar yarn for some socks and found the same problem. I have other of this brand of yarn in my stash, and it looks like it is tighter spun. Maybe it's just this barber pole-like yarn that has a tendency to split.