I’m still in search of the perfect buttons for the Brooks Top Cardi, which I knit in Nashua Creative Focus Linen. There is a lot going on in this pattern, from the patterned button band to the deep ribbing, angled vertical waist and bust shaping, eyelets and latticework. I love the way this cropped sweater gives a nod to the classic 1950s silhouette, nipped in at the waistline.

This was an enjoyable knit because there was enough happening to keep it interesting. It wasn’t so challenging as to be frustrating, but it switched up enough along the way that it wasn’t a total slog. This will make a great summer cardigan for those days when the AC is making it just a bit too shivery indoors.

I can’t believe this project sat dormant for nearly four years! I started on it back in 2008 and had finished everything but the crochet edging at the neck, waist and sleeves. I just couldn’t get the hang of the backwards crochet motion (I think the last time I did any crochet was in about the fourth grade.) Add to that that I had a hard time finishing up the edging so that it both laid flat and didn’t leave giant holes in the existing stitching. I wonder if the test knit yarns did a better job of filling in those holes? Some aggressive steam blocking eventually made the edging lay down, but that alone took me six hours to finish because the crochet went so slowly. Overall though I’m pleased with the way the bias knitting and curved seams make a garment with a pleasant shape. I anticipate wearing this often now that it’s finally finished.

That said, I love the way the alpaca feels–it is very light but also very warm, and this could easily be a next-to-skin sweater. However, the fiber stretches and drapes (and I was knitting on a needle three sizes smaller than recommended by the pattern!) Although I was technically at gauge, the fabric “grows” in all directions. The drapiness that might be well-suited to a scarf is less lovely in a garment. I may try knitting the same pattern with a yarn that has a bit more structure.

Even though my yarn decision may not have been the best, I really love this pattern because it has such a European vibe. It is so hard to find a good boat neck! I have very narrow shoulders, so a wide neckline suits me better than a standard crew neck. I did end up making a few modifications to it for a custom fit. First of all, I added vertical darts in the upper back (paired columns of increases) to make up for my wider-than-average cross back width. I also added small horizontal darts in the front at the bust and belly to balance the front and back lengths. Instead of working the waist shaping as written, I added a column of 1×1 twisted ribbing at each side seam to pull in close to the body. I worked a couple of increases to the sleeves to make them bell just slightly, and omitted the side vents (after reworking them several times, I determined that I couldn’t find a correct placement for them that would allow them to hang comfortably when I was working at a computer. At that point I was sick of it and just worked the sleeve edging in the round in alternating K/P rows.)

Overall I’m happy with the way the fit came out, though, and I plan to style the dark navy with denim and lime green accessories for the sake of contrast. I think this may become a favorite sweater, especially in the winter.

I have managed to finish up the first 2 ounce skein of a medium-brown, 3-ply Merino that I have plans to knit up into a sweater:

I wanted one finished skein for quality control, but I’m afraid this will be a long-haul spinning project. At least n-plying goes quicker than plying for yardage. The finished sweater will pair this medium brown with a hand-painted Merino from Four Rivers Yarn and Fiber (Woolamina on etsy.)The colorway is Weathered Penny. I am thinking of using a pattern like King of Confidence from Knitty, or the Garter Yoke Cardigan, to create sort of a fake Fair Isle design. I can’t decide yet between cardigan or pullover, but it looks like there will be plenty of time to mull that over while I finish up the yarn.

Knitting time lately has consisted of Margot and more Margot, which looks like this:

which will be lovely when finished but has become a bit of a slog. I’m trying to stay off Ravelry so I’m not tempted to look at other patterns so I can stay motivated to finish her. Only the sleeves are left so it shouldn’t be long.

In the past I’ve struggled with finding the rhythm of the technique and ended up with entirely too much twist in the finished yarn. When I changed my drafting pattern from forward from my body to the orifice to sideways across the body and at right-angles to the orifice, everything sort of fell into place. I look forward to trying this technique again, going for a skinnier singles aimed at sock yarn. And yet again, I learned that Polwarth blooms a lot after the good old soak and whack.

Research and Select Your Method
Type of Dye
I can’t afford to invest in a second set of kitchen tools and implements solely for dyeing, so I use non-toxic, inexpensive food coloring to apply color to wool. That said, food dyes often produce colors that are rather obnoxious for my taste, and I want to dye fiber that I actually would like to knit with after it’s spun.

This article from Knitty describes a helpful exercise in mixing more subdued colors with food dyes, and explains a little bit of color theory (remember the color wheel from kindergarten?) Although the extra work involved in dyeing small samples for color correction takes time, if you’re worried about controlling your results, the time is well worth it (akin to knitting a gauge swatch). Dyeing the fiber before spinning means that loud colors will muddy slightly as spinning and plying occur. Deb Menz’s book Color in Spinning provides detailed explanations of how colors, fibers, air and space play off each other when colored fibers spin up into finished yarn. It has a lot of color illustrations and is fairly expensive, but my public library has a copy (I’ve checked it out numerous times.)

Materials
Covering Up
You’ll probably not want to wear your favorite shirt or apron while you’re working with food dyes, but you already knew that. Whether or not you want to wear gloves is your prerogative. I find that gloves affect my tiny-jar-scraping dexterity. Gel food dyes can be fiddly to get out of the container, and may plop all over you or your countertop. I personally don’t rock a manicure and don’t mind dye stains on my fingers or fingernails, but if you do, you’ll want to wear gloves, either the thicker housework kind or the thinner, medical latex kind. And by all means, if you’re the type to put down newspaper in your workspace, put down newspaper. This stuff will stain, and sneakily get underneath things where you will not notice it until it’s too late.

Fiber
For this project, I used one pound of Sweet Grass Targhee combed wool top from Paradise Fibers, but this procedure will work with any kind of animal protein fiber. Note that if you use silk or a silk blend, don’t heat it to a temperature above 172º F, or you will risk losing the silk’s sheen.

I separated the wool into sixteen one-ounce portions, mostly because this leaves square numbers that make the math easier. The one-ounce lengths are also easiest (for me) to handle when they’re wet and fit easiest in the crock pot. The wool came already divided into two eight-ounce lengths. I put the two ends of each length together and divided in half, then divided each of those halves in half, and so forth, until there were sixteen approximately equal lengths.

Mordant
A mordant is a chemical that helps the dye adhere to the fiber. My husband is sensitive to the smell of vinegar. To keep the peace in our house I use citric acid crystals, which have no smell, as a mordant. Originally I purchased citric acid in quantity from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company as a part of an unrelated cheesemaking adventure. A friend also told me recently that you can find it in the grocery section of Neomonde in Raleigh as well (hooray for not having to pay shipping).

Squeezy Things
Lots of tutorials recommend a turkey baster for the hand-painting part of the dyeing process. Perhaps it’s because I had a cheap one, but I found it to be a bit too drippy. The bulb syringes one uses to assist babies who have colds seem to me to have the most appropriate volume and force of liquid stream when squeezed, so I use them to apply the dye to the fiber. The smaller one in the photo at left is my favorite squeezy thing of the lot. The other two are great dribbly ones.

Veterinary Syringe
I saved a 1 mL syringe I got at the vet (this one was an extra, and was not used for any pets). They appear to have these in the baby area of the drugstore too. I use it to measure even amounts of gel food coloring when mixing dye solution. It is helpful (for consistency’s sake) to know exactly how much of a color you’ve added to a particular solution. Be careful trying to draw up obscenely old gel with the syringe. Otherwise it can get caught in the very tip. Use a toothpick and water to get the gunk out, but remember you’ll also probably get the stuff all over your hands while squidging it out. I speak from experience.

Jars
I have had this box of old canning jars forever (forgive how dusty they are, but I store them out in the shed). Make sure you have tight-fitting lids for each. I use a jar to mix and store the dye stock for each color, and then another to dilute the same color into for squeezy, paint-y purposes.

Color
For this project, I’m using food dye gels that came bundled in a set of four for a cake decorating class. The four colors are royal, buttercup, moss, and copper. In retrospect, I wish I had stuck to two or three colors, especially because royal tends to separate into purple and shocking pink. I accept this unexpected surprise, but it may make you gnash your teeth and tear your hair. If you find this unacceptable, you may want to dye one primary color and then overdye with another, i.e., blue, then yellow, to make green. This will take agonizingly long, but you’ll get exactly what you want.

Procedure
Soak the Fiber
Before you begin applying color, you’ll need to soak your fiber so it’s good and wet. To a gallon of water I add about a teaspoon of human hair conditioner and 1/4 tsp of citric acid. If you’ve got a clotty hair conditioner, you can use a wire whisk to break it up. This is not only to wet the fiber, but to open it up and get it ready to accept the dye. I roll each one-ounce length of combed top into a tight snail shape, carefully tucking all the ends in.

Once the fiber gets wet, be extremely careful not to handle it too roughly or too much, or the fibers will abrade and begin to felt. However, it is ok to push the bundles assertively into the soaking water, provided that you don’t agitate them. Squeeze the air bubbles out gently. Remember, you want the soak to get the fibers good and wet. Soak for at least 30 minutes. I’ve soaked overnight before, but I would caution you not to go too much longer than that, especially in warm muggy weather in the Southern United States. I’ve had fiber start to mildew before, and it happened within hours. That was a sad, sad day, so I don’t prolong the soak.

Mix Color
While the fiber is soaking, you can use the syringe, gel, and canning jars to begin mixing your colors. Apply what you’ve learned from your research about colors to choose proportions of each color gel. E.g., you may want mostly yellow with a hint of green in it. Put the appropriate amount of gel into a two-cup canning jar, and add half a cup of hot water. Put the lid on tight and shake it up good. Hold the jar up to the light to make sure you can’t see any gel left in the bottom. Refer to the chart below for measurements. Follow the row across based on how many ounces of fiber you want to dye in total. For example, if you want to dye four ounces of fiber evenly with each of four colors, you only need enough of each color to dye one ounce, or 25% of the total amount of fiber. Don’t be afraid to round up or down for practicality’s sake. The measurements for “drops of dye” refers to the grocery-store type liquid food colors.

In this case, I measured and mixed enough of each of four colors to dye four ounces, or 1/4 pound of fiber. This solution is known as the dye stock solution. However, I’m only able to heat set four ounces at once (two ounces in each of two crock pots.) I mixed a separate jar for each color that contained 1/8 cup of the color solution, a scant 1/4 tsp citric acid crystals, and 1 cup of water. This portion of the original solution was the one that actually got painted on the fiber.

Paint the Fiber
There are many different methods for applying color to the fiber. The resources listed below describe many of them. For example, you can lay it out flat on plastic wrap and squirt or dribble dye over it for a random, Jackson Pollock sort of effect. If you add water later, however, the blops and drips will run together. Leave space in between bands of color for when the colors run (they will!) Place it in the crock pot and pour dye randomly over it.  I have found that I can fit two one-ounce bundles of fiber in each of my crock pots so long as the fiber is bundled in a snail shape.

Remove a fiber bundle from the soak and gently squeeze (don’t wring, twist or rub) the water out. I usually untuck the ends, unroll the tight bundle, and re-roll it into a flat coil. For the two coils I tried in the microwave I used an 8×8 glass baking dish. You can also nestle them side by side in a crock pot. Once the fiber is coiled, fill the bulb syringe with the mordanted, diluted color and begin to squirt it into the fiber coil. If the coil is tight, you might try plunging the end of the bulb syringe into the coil until you feel the bottom of the crock, sort of injecting dye solution into the fiber. If you feel strongly that you don’t want any undyed spots on your fiber*, check carefully for coverage. I use an old pair of metal tongs to lift up the coil and peek underneath it.   If you’re dyeing four coils at once, you can count the number of syringe-fuls and make sure you apply an even number to each coil. Make sure that you apply all the diluted solution to the fiber, though, to make sure that the resulting solution is acidic enough that the dye will set. The painting is the fun creative part and there’s no right way to do it. Experiment to find the technique or effect that YOU like.

*Some dyers make certain that dye solution penetrates all surfaces of the fiber. If you’re not careful, you may end up with some white places where the dye did not penetrate. This is a personal preference of course, but if you don’t like undyed spots, take care to ensure that dye penetrates all the fiber, but at the same time make sure you don’t agitate the fiber too much.

Heat Set the Dye
At this stage of the game, sometimes I like to add a little bit more clear water as “insurance.” It will get in between the fibers and help the colors run by means of capillary action. While I don’t fill the crock pot up to the top by any means, I do try to add enough water so that the fiber is just submerged, but not floating. Put the lid on, and turn the crock pot on low and leave it alone for probably around 3-4 hours. You’ll know you’re done cooking when you can spoon a little bit of colorless water out of the dyebath. In my personal crock pot, this process has taken about 3 1/2 hours.

Cool the Fiber
When the water is clear, turn off the crock pot. At this point, you’ll need to let the fiber cool before handling it. Handling hot fiber means you’ll soon have felt! Heat and agitation are the enemies of soft, fluffy fiber. Now, you might want felt, but most likely not if you mean to spin the wool. This is the most agonizing part of the process because it takes around two hours for the fiber to cool completely. I try to hasten the cooling by taking the crocks out of the crock pots, removing the lids, and setting them on the stovetop. I turn the exhaust fan on over them to speed airflow around them. Here are some things that you can do while you wait for the fiber to cool: poke a cat in the butt. Read a book. Work on your spinning or knitting. Go for a walk.

Dry the Fiber
Squeeze the water out gently, but again, don’t handle the fiber too much. Spread the dyed wool out on a bathtowel. I normally do this on top of my guest bedroom bed, because the room has a ceiling fan that I can leave on overnight to help the fiber dry out. The drying process rarely takes longer than overnight, in my experience. Excuse the crappy quality of the photo– it was taken indoors in the dark of night.

Admire Your Work
When you’re unable to contain your anticipation any longer, have a look at your completed fiber. At this point, I’m always happily surprised to remember that wet fiber often looks darker than dry fiber. Some of the colors you saw in the dyebath may be completely different than how you thought they would come out. When the dyed fiber is dry, it’s ready to be spun.

Resource Bibliography

I’ve referred to the following resources over and over again as I’ve learned to handpaint wool:

How to Paint Roving and Yarn, from Joanna & Keith Gleason at Gleason’s Fine Woolies

Wilton’s icing gel dyeing tutorial, by Star Athena

More dyeing with food color, by Allena Jackson

Yarn dyeing tutorial, by Alice Schnebly

Color to dye for, by Julie Theaker

Takes the cake!… erm Icing! – Dyeing with Wilton’s Icing Colours, from Jobo Designs

Dyeing in a crock pot, from Robbyn at the Yarnpath

Crockpot fiber dyeing, from Sleepy Eyes Knitting

2-ply Handspun Polwarth Wool

I spun this yarn on slowest whorl on my Schacht Matchless. For the past couple of spinning projects, I’ve forgotten to change the whorl which resulted in some tensely twisted yarns. Carefully and deliberately, I applied the minimum amount of twist to make the yarn hold together, so that it would be pleasant to knit with in the future.

The decision I made that I wish I hadn’t was to spin for yardage and create a 2-ply yarn. The twist was low enough in the singles that it probably would have worked ok as a 3-ply, especially because of how springy Polwarth is. Rushing to finish the project is something I regret. I chalk it up to being really excited about having a finished yarn in this particular colorway, and forgetting to take the necessary steps to preserve them. Another important lesson learned with this project was that Polwarth blooms–a LOT!

Thus I am only mildly happy with the end result. It is a bit barber-poley and tweedy for what I had in mind. I don’t hate it, but it’s not my favorite. I have learned an important lesson to think more carefully about the properties of the finished yarn before I begin a project. Tactile-wise, though, I’m pleased with the bouncy, springy quality of the yarn and predict it will feel pleasing to knit with.

2-ply Romney Handspun, Pearled Shells Colorway

This was originally destined for a sweater yoke combined with the Gotland I spun over the holiday break. The finished yarn bloomed a bit more than I had hoped, so it ended up with a few too many wraps per inch. It will make a nice patterned yoke someday, just not for the sweater as planned. The whole time that I was spinning this I was under the impression that it was BFL, (it has been a while since I purchased it.) I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually Romney because now I can say I have even more experience with longwool.

I’ve been fiddling around with the “Create Collage” feature of Picasa. I’ve decided I need to do more of these. I like the idea of documenting the whole process, especially for projects that start out as raw fiber and transition from yarn to finished object. This is one pound of lovely, silvery Gotland. Costume designers for the LOTR movies used Gotland for the hobbit cloaks in the film. I spun it worsted to bring out the sheen, but that was a bit of a tradeoff for softness I fear/ The finished yarn is a bit like twine. The raw fiber feels very much like human hair. The finished heavy fingering to DK weight yarn (ranges from 12-14 wpi) is destined for a raglan sweater that I accept will probably not be suitable for wearing next to the skin. I’m going to do a patterned yoke with some hand dyed BFL from Fiber Fancy. I’m in the process of spinning it up now. I guess I’ll need to do another collage of the whole shebang once it’s done. The Gotland took me a year, off and on, to finish. I hope the finished sweater won’t take nearly as long.