Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Self striping yarn post number one

yep that means there will be more!

As I mentioned in the newsletter, I am trying my hand at making a large stripe self striping yarn. The idea is you take one skein and break it into three (or however many you want) smaller skeins with the yarn all connected and looping from the first mini skein to the second to the third and then back to the first and continue to repeat this until you run out of yarn. I read about it and decided to try it.

The suggested method of doing this is to take two chairs, cover them with a towel to help the yarn not to slip and then wind the yarn around both chairs a few times. I did twice. Then move lower on the chairs and go around twice more, the lower and twice again. You then take the yarn back to the first set and wind twice more. Repeat until you run out of yarn. Does this work? yep. Does your back scream in agony? yep. Is it remotely easy to keep the yarn loops where you want them? NO! I did this in my parent's living room - their dinner room chairs are taller with more detail - which helped some. So did my Dad. Post two will talk (and show as I wouldn't forget my camera!) the help Dad is suggesting.

On to the dye pot. I used Mother Mackenzie Miracle Mix dyes for this in brown, blue, and purple. I pre soaked the fibers in Sythrapol and used a crockpot and citric acid for the dyepot. In this method you dye each mini-skein separately, but allow the dye to wick up into the connecting yarn pieces.
 It looks like a bit of a jumble here. Some of that is due to the chair wrap method. Some is likely because I had about 6 feet between the chairs.
 Brown is dyed and the purple is in the pot.
 Pulling the purple out!
 Dyeing the blue, the sponge is catching drips for me as the yarn is quite wet. I do think having the skeins hanging over the pot helps the wicking process.
 After dyeing the skeins were soaked again and hung to dry.
The yarn I chose had quite a bit of over twist, which I plan to correct before proceeding.

Julia