Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

I dyed more yarn yesterday and today. I mentioned that this time I was going to be using acid dye, rather than mx dye. I love how it works… the yarn just sucks all the dye out of the water!

With mx dyes there is always a lot of wash out. Excess dye that didn’t bind to the fabric and has to be rinsed out. Not so with acid dyes!

So I took some photos. This first one is of the yarn going into the murky dye pot. I left a bit sticking out so you could see the color it was. (pale lime green, almost yellow, yuck!)

When the water gets to a certain temperature, the dye magically disappears into the yarn. (the magic temp was 150 F for me) The water was still faintly blue, but you can see all the way to the bottom! Couldn’t do that before!

That was so cool… I mean, I was expecting it to happen, did quite a bit of reading online before attempting to dye wool… but still, nothing like seeing it in real life!

The almost dried yarn looks like this next photo, a very blue green. It’s also quite tangled, I didn’t tie off the yarn more like I’d done with longer skeins in the coral to red/brown batch. I tied off the second batch of this with some cotton yarn before putting it into the dye pot, though. Can’t be having a bunch of tangled yarn! (sorry about that, Jan, it’s gonna be a chore winding this)

Second batch is cooling in the dye bath and will get rinsed/washed as soon as I can put my hand into the water and have it not feel too warm. Sometime before bedtime, I hope, so that it can dry overnight and get mailed early this week. Er, of course Jan may not approve of this color… so I may be doing over and changing it somewhat. Hey, but at least it’s not pale yucky lime any more!

Lastly for tonight… while I was waiting on dye bath to cool down yesterday I finished knitting my hat. Now, previously I’ve only knitted 2 fun fur scarves and a purse that got felted. Just basic garter stitch, aside from a few rows of purling on the purse. I was sort of experimenting on this hat I made with cheap acrylic yarn… to see if I might like knitting anything fancier than just plain old knitting every row. I do love knitting in the round… if I had to do stockinette stitch by switching between purling and knitting it would NEVER come out as even as it does with circular needles. I knit very tightly, and I purl very loosely. Switching between those, like for the ribbing… Big Holes. But as you can see, I managed to do some more garter stitch that came out pretty good.

The bottom of the hat was done back and forth until I wanted to switch to stockinette, then I went to knitting in the round. I think it came out pretty good, considering I was knitting without a pattern. It’s not as long as it should be, I underestimated how far it would go when I got to decreasing at the top. The decreasing bit was fun… I realized about the 3rd round that it was NEVER going to work continuing on the circular needle. Switched over to DPN’s and went a little smaller because my bamboo DPN’s are in metric and the corresponding American size was actually a bit larger. It’s easier to switch to smaller needles than to larger needles when you knit as tightly as I do.

While knitting the hat I also tried to train myself to knit in the continental style, with the yarn held in the left hand. I got good at it… but my rows got tighter and tighter and I had to switch back to right hand yarn after the 3rd round or so. Could BARELY get the needle in at that point. It’s probably just a matter of practice… I’ve also taught myself a bad habit knitting the hat. Using my fingertips to poke at the tips of the needles while working stitches. I’ve got a fairly well bruised right index finger, so with my next project (already started) I’m trying to untrain myself at that. Hey, I’ve got so I can sort of watch tv while knitting… long as I remember to look over the reading glasses when I look at the tv, lol!

Expecting Ron’s daughter Candice to come over in a little while… she needs to use the computer… plus I want to talk to her. My new project is something I think she’ll like… but it may have to be the next project after this one. We’ll see.

Hugs,
Vyx

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