Tag Archive for ‘self-striping’ at adam knits!

Tag Archive for 'self-striping'

Shameless Self Promotion Saturday 16Sep06

Howdy! So I was going to do a Yarn Pr0n Friday post yesterday with some very revealing shots of the new colorways up in the shop, but didn’t have the time…so instead I bring you Shameless Self Promotion Saturday!

That’s right, I have yarn in the shop, and I’m not afraid to show it off! So without further ado, let’s bring on the yarn!

First up we have the NM Sunset colorway, in a new Merino Superwash DK Weight yarn that I just got in. This NM Sunset is a bit different from my original skein, as it features more yellow, but it’s still just as cool. I really like this yarn too, the gauge is 5-6 stitches / inch with a needle size around a #4 - #6. I did keep one skein of this that I wasn’t terribly happy with the dye job, so I could test out a pair of speedy socks on US 4’s. I’ll let you know ;)

NM Sunset DK

Then we have a new colorway that I wasn’t too sure about at first, but have fallen completely in love with. It’s called India Spice, and it has black, white, tinges of gray and a hard to describe mustard/olive yellow color. I’m not doing it justice, but I think it’s an absolutely beautiful shade, almost a rich and darker saffron, which is what led me to the name. Definitely great guy colors, so it has my seal of approval.

India Spice DK

Next up is a fun new colorway that I’ve entitled Sunflower Road. It has shades of pale green and yellow, and a nice light gray. This colorway reminds me of the gorgeous drive up to my parent’s house, with the old faded road and the sunflowers springing up all over the place. The yarn is fingering weight sock yarn, with about 8-10 stitches / inch with #1 - #3 needles.

Sunflower Road Sock

The final colorway today is a fun new one that I decided to try, and it’s called Carnival. I wanted to do something really bright and fun, so I got out all the vibrant colors and went at it. The resulting skein is variegated, rather than self-striping, but I think will all the different colors (red, yellow, green, blue and purple) it would make some pretty cool socks.

Carnival Sock

So go to the shop and check them out! I think I might dye the last 3 skeins I have tonight, and after those go up on the shop, I be placing another mammoth yarn order. So there’s lots more to come.

And now, since it’s Saturday, I have the choice between 3 options for spending my afternoon:

Clean the house, do laundry, etc. I usually enjoy this because I’ve become a neat freak, but I just don’t really feel that motivated today.
Work on the pile of homework due next week that’s sitting on my desk.
Go to the yarn shop and buy some dyes, look through patterns, caress yarn and have general grand old time.

Hmmm, which one do you think I’ll be doing?

Tags: dyeing, self-striping, shop, yarn.

Super-Sweet Superwash Sock Yarn! 22Aug06

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Hey there everyone, I’d like to proudly announce to you the opening of my own yarn store on Etsy! And there’s 2 skeins up there just waiting to be snatched up! Hurry fast, cause the NM Sunset’s already been spoken for, but Easter Eggs and Tie-Dyed are still up for grabs. There’s still 3 more skeins coming, but I have to get the pictures off the parent’s camera first, and you know how that goes…but I’ll give you their names as a teaser.

Barber Shop Twist
Lucky Charms Twist
Pink Panther (this one’s an homage to Monica’s Pink Panther Yarn, since I loved it so much)

So go check it out, and at $18 a skein can you really resist? :-P

adamknits.etsy.com

In other news, the craft fair this past weekend went pretty well, despite being rained out on Sunday :(. But we sold a good amount of stuff and have a better handle on what type of things sell (i.e. cheap hats and dishrags) better than others. So we’ll trudge along and are thinking about entering another fair or two this fall to sell a few more things, but Mom and I definitely don’t want to do the stay up until 3 am knitting furiously thing again, as that made for a long weekend. As you can also tell by my yarn sale, I didn’t sell any yarn at the craft fair, but I wasn’t really expecting to either as it wasn’t a knitting centric event. That just means you, my lovely readers, get to horde the fun yarn colors all to yourselves.

That’s all for now, so laterz n00bs! (Don’t ask, I know I have issues).

P.S. I got my new MacBook and it’s amazing! And I started school yesterday, expect a full report on adjusting to life at an uber-trendy city school versus a small town nerd school. It’s strange let me tell ya.

Tags: dyeing, self-striping, shop, unm, yarn.

Dyed and Gone to Heaven 16Aug06

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So I finally got my act together and took pictures of my newly dyed yarn, but before getting to see those, you have to sit through my diatribe on my dyeing methods :-P

So far when dyeing yarn, I like to do immersion dyeing on the stovetop because it’s easy to control the color and not very messy. But the problem I seem to run into is the tradeoff between tieing the yarn after it’s been wrapped on the warping board, and achieving even dyeing results. After a few incidents involving tangling (which we will not speak of), I became ultra paranoid and started wrapping each subskein with about 85 ties to make sure they stayed in place. Well this leads to the dye not absorbing evenly because the yarn isn’t left to flow freely in the dye solution, so sometimes the areas under the ties even stay white. I have yet to come up with the perfect solution, but I have a few ideas and have reached somewhat of a compromise.

cooking up some yarn

I got the best results when I tied the yarn in less places and very loosely. Then after it’s rinsed, I straightened out each subskein and tied the crap out of it. This helped with getting the dry yarn arranged on the warping board for winding. That’s my solution so far…but do you have any experience or advice that you’d like to pass along? Leave a comment and let me know.

So without further ado, I present my latest colorways!

First up is Tie-Dyed, which is literally named because this is the first skein I dyed, and the ties were way too tight. I dyed it in a deep purple, green and blue, but the sections where the cotton ties were didn’t really dye at all. I was somewhat saddened about this, until I realized that it actually looked pretty cool. Mom said that it reminded her of a Tie-Dye T-Shirt, so the name stuck!

tie-dyed, with a wonderful frosty perry cider, ahhh.

Then we have **New Mexico Sunset**, which is my absolute favorite of this dyeing session. I used Burnt Orange, Aztec Gold and Fire Red together to create a very brilliant skein that reminds me of our gorgeous sunsets here in NM. It wasn’t until later that I realized that I subconsciously dyed the skein of yarn that I hinted Scout about a few months ago. I had said I’d love a skein that looked like the NM flag with yellow and red, and well here it is! I especially love how the white sections that weren’t immersed and just soaked up dye turned a slight pink, which is what the sunset does too.

new mexico sunset

Lastly, we have a skein colored by my Mom. She picked her favorite colors and I set off to work. The resulting skein is very pretty and subdued, with light pink, lilac and spring green. It’s called Easter Eggs, and I think it came out great :)

easter eggs

I’m going to have a hard time selling these yarns at the craft fair, because I’m so attached to them! And I’m planning to have another dye session tonight to dye one more skein of Kona Superwash and 2 skeins of Licorice Twist. Wish me luck!

Tags: craft fairs, dyeing, self-striping, techniques, yarn.

A Quickie 14Aug06

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Just a quick post today…

This weekend was filled with lots of dyeing at my parent’s house, and some of the yarn that resulted is pretty cool. The plan is to see if we can sell it at the craft fair, but if it doesn’t sell I won’t be too broken up to keep it! Pictures coming sometime soon…but for a teaser the colorways dyed so far are called Tie-Dye, New Mexico Sunset and Easter Eggs. I’m working up one more colorway which I’m pretty excited about too, that one should get dyed sometime this week.

The craft fair looms close, and the knitting kicks into overdrive as I whip out hats, scarves and whatever else I can manage to fit in! And you know what happens after the craft fair??? The Village Wools moving sale! 15% off everything in the store! My wallet is running away as I type…

That’s about it, I just wanted to put out a teaser about the cool yarn pictures coming soon…

P.S. You may have noticed the little chat thing in the top of the sidebar, and wondered “what the heck???”. If it says “webguru4god is online”, that means I’m available to chat, in real time! Just type in the box and talk to me, it’s pretty sweet! So give it a try :) And if you want to change the nickname from “meeboguestxxxxxx” to something more personal, just click the nickname at the bottom. What do you think? Is this weird, creepy or cool?

Tags: dyeing, knitting, self-striping, the lys, works-in-progress, yarn.

Neon Rave Yarn! 29May06

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Government jobs are very nice. Almost everyone in my department decided to take this past Friday off, which meant that I had no one to escort me, so I got to have a very nice 4 day weekend…which means that I got to have some dyeing fun!

On Friday I decided what colors I wanted to do for my Dye-O-Rama Pal, and went to VW to pick up the necessary dyes. Then on Saturday I got all the equipment to make the warping board described over on Amy’s blog, Needles & Hooks. I like Scout’s board, but was looking for something with a little more flexibility, and the peg board idea is simply genious!

So with all the supplies bought, I was ready to start testing out my color ideas. I mixed concentrates of all the dyes, and stored them in mason jars for easy use later. I won’t say too much about the testing, since when I sent my “anonymous e-mail” to my dyeing pal, it wasn’t really anonymous. She promised that she had forgotten my identity ;), but I still want things to be a surprise.

Anyway, my results weren’t too happy, because I didn’t dilute the concentrates enough, and that yellowish color is not what it’s supposed to be at all. So I’m going to do some more tests and determine the proper dilutions and then I think I’ll be all set to dye the final product!

Anyway, just wanted to give an update on my dyeing progress over the weekend. And I just received an e-mail today saying that my yarn is on the way, so I’m excited!

As far as knitting goes, I do have progress in that area, but I can’t reveal it to you quite yet. It’s a secret project involving people who read this blog, so I can’t reveal the secret yet, but I promise, it will be unveiled soon. I’m driving to NE with a group on Thursday for a friend’s wedding, so I should get a fair amount of work on this super secret project done. So look for the revelation early next week. Have a good one!

Tags: dyeing, self-striping, yarn.

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