She Was Twisted

I let my 4-year old dye his very own roving the other day. I mixed up Neon food coloring dyes, put them in squeeze bottles, and told him to have at it. The only thing I helped with was squishing the dye into the wool as he squeezed. Didn’t it come out fantastic! (and in case you are wondering, food coloring dyes ARE washfast and colorfast dyes as long as you set it with vinegar and heat. Perfect for kids!)

And here is the resulting yarn.

Love it!

Overdyeing is the greatest. You can take something that either you don’t like, or are growing bored with, and change it into something new and fresh.

This is the wool I dyed some time ago.

And this is the lovely yarn I spun half of it into. Pretty! (Notice how the white spots all blend together and the overall color gets muted when you spin it.)

Instead of spinning the other half, I decided I wanted to transform it into something new. So….out came the orange dye!

I kettle-dyed the wool in a bath of solid orange. No extra hand painting or rainbow dyeing.

And finally, the resulting handspun. (this photo is horrible, it doesn’t pick up all the vibrant color well at all.) I spun it low twist, into a single-ply yarn. I could not be more pleased! So let’s see them side by side:

Neat!

I actually completed these socks many months back, but never got around to blogging about them. Aren’t they gorgeous?!

These were my first socks knit from a Knit Picks sock blank. I followed the pattern, Two at Once, Toe Up, Magic Loop Socks. A very easy knit! (If you are seasoned in sock knitting.) I’m mentioned before that knitting with a sock blank is the best ever. Plus, you can control the color striping, which is what I loved. Here is what the blank looked like after I dyed it. You can see the beginning of the knitted socks at the bottom:

The only problem I had, is that I did not squish the dyes enough into the yarn. This made it knit up much lighter with white speckles where the dye did not go all the way through. I still love how it turned out, however!

Definitely something you should give a try, if you love knitting socks with simple stripes. I’m on my second pair now. Will post pics of the new socks soon!

I loved knitting my last pair of sock blank socks so much that I decided to knit another pair. What is a sock blank? Let me enlighten you!

Here is one of the reviews from Knit Picks:

“Anyone who’s ever hand-dyed sock yarn, or knit from a skein of hand-dyed sock yarn, has been bedeviled by pooling colors. Knit Picks has a new product which takes the guesswork out of dyeing sock yarn. Sock Blanks are pre-knit tubes of undyed sock yarn. You dye the pre-knit tube with the stripes that you want, then knit your socks directly off the tube. Somehow this seems like cheating, but in a good way.” Yarn Scoop

Here is what my blank looked like after dyeing:

Things I love most about knitting socks from a sock blank:

1. You can easily dye stripes and patterns.
2. It is double stranded so you can knit two socks at once.
3. When knitting, the yarn does not twist and tangle the way it does when knitting from two separate balls of yarn.
4. You end up with two identical socks.
5. It keeps your knitting interesting without the need for any pattern repeats.
6. Provides endless mind-boggling for others trying to figure out why in the world you are creating TWO knitted pieces without any yarn in between.

Definitely give it a try. I’m not sure if I will ever knit any other way. Yes, I’m that impressed.

Paradise Fibers sent out a newsletter last month announcing their newest spinning fiber – Faux Angora. It is made from Nylon, and was supposed to mimic angora bunny fiber. Soft as a bunny with no allergies and machine washable? You bet I’m interested!!

When the fiber arrived I just about peed in my pants. It was heavenly. Super, super soft. Just like angora. I couldn’t stop touching it. I dyed some up and started spinning right away.

Here is my roving that I dyed with deep purples, green and pale turquoisy-blue Lanaset Acid dyes. I had to take the photo with the flash on, so the colors aren’t quite so crisp and sparkly.

Dyeing:

Dyeing the fiber was a little bit tricker than the usual wool. It sucked up the color like nobody’s business. I swear the dye had already striked before I even got it to the heat source. So there was a lot of moving and squishing and re-squirting to get the dye evenly without white spots. You also had to be very careful when handling the roving because it would start to pull apart. But the results were gorgeous, and no dye washed out in the final bath.

My only complaints, are 1.) The wet fiber is really slimy feeling. Kinda like playing with a big wad of seaweed in the ocean. 2.) The roving sheds to anything it comes near. I wasn’t smart enough to separate it from my other wool rovings that I was dyeing when I hung them to dry, so there are now tiny nylon fibers all over my other wools. So be careful where you place your fiber.

Spinning:

If you are a new spinner, you will need to take your time because the fiber is very slippery and loose. A little bit of drafting is all it takes. But I found it super easy to spin into a fine yarn. I spun a 2-ply yarn, that was somewhere around a DK/Worsted weight. I really enjoyed spinning it.

Here is my resulting yarn. Didn’t it come out pretty?

The Yarn:

I have to be honest, I was a tiny bit disappointed with the resulting yarn. It felt a bit wirey to me. -Nothing like the original roving when it was loose and fluffy. I blame it on my spinning such a tight yarn. -But then again, had I spun it loosely, I think the shedding would be horrible. I rubbed the skein up again a few items of clothing and was impressed with the minimal shedding. -So we will see.

Knitting:

I decided to knit a pair of children’s mitts for my 1-year-old sister-inlaw, Solara. I used the formula from my favorite book, The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns to knit a swatch on size 3 needles. It was a nice tight knit. –Let me tell you, the fabric is coming out beautiful!! The bloom of the faux angora is just like the real thing. Very amazing. It softened up just like I was hoping for. I still have the thumb of the second mitt to knit, then the ends to weave in, and a few final touches of pom-poms. The final test will be throwing it in the washing machine. (scary!) I’ll post a final pic once I get them complete.

The Verdict:

All in all, I love this fiber. It really does feel just like angora bunny yarn for a fraction of the price and none of the hassle. Everyone needs to give it a try!

Yes, fake cashmere. I couldn’t resist buying some of this stuff. It is synthetic, made from rayon I believe, and is advertised as being as soft as cashmere. Machine washable and long fiber length is a bonus. Humm. Sounds fun, right?

Dyeing
Dyeing the fiber was a lot of fun. It soaked up the dyes beautifully. I used Lanaset acid dyes in pink, mauve, fushia and tan. I dyed the fiber in the crock pot, just randomly pouring color over the layers of coiled up fiber. The dye bonded just like an animal fiber. I didn’t have any color wash out in the final rinse. So that was a good thing.

But spinning it was a bit tricky.

Spinning
The fiber is so fine and has such a long staple length, that even just pulling the fiber apart was a challenge. It is STRONG. My first attempt was to spin a single-ply, bulky yarn. No, no, no. I got extremely frustrated. Drafting was a nightmare because if the teeny-tiniest bit of twist got anywhere near the fiber supply, the whole thing would harden up and not budge. After fighting with the roving for a half hour or so, I gave up. – Not worth my time.

So instead, I opted to treat the fake cashmere just like silk. – I split it down to tiny little strips about the width of my pinky, and I spun long woolen-ish style, never allowing the twist to ever come in between my front hand and the back hand holding the fiber. Now we are spinning! The biggest challenge was to keep the twist away from the drafting triangle. I plied it and ended up with some really nice worsted weight yarn.

Now is it as soft as cashmere?

IMO, not really.

The Yarn
In my opinion, it is identical to silk. It feels like silk, it spins like silk, it has the same strength as silk and it knits like silk. I really think they should call it fake silk. And if anyone thinks I’m out of my mind to say this, please! let me know. I’d love to hear what other folks think of this stuff.

I do love the slight sheen, the softness and the “crisp” in the final yarn. However there is very little stretch (what is that called – elasticity?) so you wouldn’t want to make anything that is going to require a lot of stretch and memory.

Oh wait – but I am one for doing exactly what you shouldn’t do…so I decided to knit a pair of wrist warmers.

The Knitting
I looked through my handy-dandy book, The New Knitting Stitch Library, and found a simple cable-looking pattern that isn’t really a cable. (The cross-over is actually formed by knitting behind 3 stitches.) Then I knit up a swatch on size 7 needles, calculated my stitches per inch, measured my wittle wrists and found me a cast-on number. Last some fiddling here and there and figured where to place my cable.

The cable was a pain in the butt to knit with the fake cashmere. Remember my saying that there was little to no elasticity and memory? Well try knitting in the back loop of a stitch that is 4 stitches over on your needles. You have to stretch across without dropping all the stitches that are being skipped. I found it very difficult. I would imagine had I been working with a nice stretchy wool yarn, it wouldn’t have been such an ordeal.

To add some frills and thrills, I added a ruffle border that I found in the book, Knitting Over The Edge. Again, this was not fun at all to knit with a non-stretchy yarn since you are knitting like 3-4 times in the same stitch over and over again. But the ruffles are so cool. I love them.

End Result
I do like the faux cashmere a lot. It created a strong, super-soft yarn that I can dye with my regular acid dyes, and can throw in the washing machine when I please. However, I did learn to treat it like silk in both spinning and knitting. Plan projects accordingly. My wrist warmers are warm, snuggly and soft. Now I need to start all over again and see how much more I can learn with my next project!