Tuesday, March 28, 2006

yeah baby…

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The little purple skein begat 14 more purple skeins.

Taking it to the Dye Pot this Sunday, Rachel and I jumped in feet first and just held our breath. Two hours later, we had:

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Glorious Purple Yarn!

The bright sunshine of high noon illuminates the skeins – they are rinsed and ready for washing here. The color looks a little different because of the high contrast light source and the fact they are WET! It was a very close replication of the sample skein –

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– total weight: 25.3 oz

– 5 gallons water

– 3.5 C salt

– 1T each, Rasberry & Marine Blue & 2T Lilac – Procion MX dye by Jacquard

– 1/2 C Soda Ash

– lots of heart (thanks Rachel for all your patience!)

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What I learned:
– skein management is really important – limit length to ~26″

– be sure to secure initial end when making skein

– tie in Figure 8’s in at least 4 places (see Fig. 12.)

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Overall, the process went smoothly and quickly. The only downside was the tendency of the wet cotton to want to knot itself on other strands. Think wet shoelaces – we spent a little extra time untangling some scary looking snags at the very end. I had to take a deep breath and listen to some Jimi Hendrix (Voodo Child) before continuing…

A little judicsious teasing, shaking and rinsing, made everything smooth out and become quite lovely…

18 Replies to “Tuesday, March 28, 2006”

  1. Wait! You never asked me for my address to send me puple-love for my birthday tomorrow! What’s up with that!!!??

    It’s so pretty. I want to wrap it all around me.

  2. It is lovely. Wonderfully lovely.

    I hope the plan is not to keep us in suspense as to what you plan to knit with it!

  3. Hi from Austria! Gosh, that yarn turned out absolutely beautiful, that shade of purple is my #1 fave color! I’m looking forward to see the pics of what you’re going to make with it!

  4. Hold the presses!

    I was momentarily in rapture with the cardi pattern, but my fickle eye is now bugging out over a raglan T pattern already in my collection.

    Gitta Schrade’s Easy On the Go short-sleeved t-shirt raglan (Knitter’s Summer 2000 #59) calls for a cotton blend or 100% cotton DK weight to be worked in a textured stitch.

    There might even be enough left over yarn for a 2nd knitter …

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