Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Back to Basics

Plain old vanilla socks ... but wait ... stripes, glorious stripes!


This is yarn I dyed up with food coloring back on July 14th.

First, I wind up a cake from the HUGE cone.  I did 60g this time, I never use all the yardage for socks, so I figured, why wind and dye all of it??


Then I make a REALLY big skein out in the yard.


Then soak the yarn to prepare it for dyeing and mix up the dyes.


Dye each section separately.  I try and measure and double check that sections are the same lengths (so my stripes are the same).  


Heat it up to set the dyes!


And let it dry!  Then I wind it back onto a kniddy knoddy so its a manageable skein.


And wind my cakes for knitting!


Honestly I don't know how yarn dyers knock these out all the time.  I know you can use a warping board, but you still have to warp it, so its gotta take the same amount of time to prepare the skein.  And you have to be OH so careful not to make a mess or your stripes won't be clean and separate.  I've done this several times now and it still takes at MINIMUM an hour per skein.

5 comments:

Wanderingcatstudio said...

Mom is the stripe queen of our operation - it's too much hassle for me! She started with a warping board, but upgraded to a warping mill. She usually winds up several large skeins, then ties them together (no more than four, I think) so she can dye them at the same time, instead of individually. It cuts down on some of the time, but it's still a lot of work. then they go back on the warping mill, and then she winds them back into smaller "sellable" skeins.
She's managed to do four-colour stripes, but we are still baffled by the people that do six, seven and eight coloured stripes - those skeins must be huge!

elns said...

That is sooo cool! I saw the outside picture and went, whoa!! I love the colors. fun socks!

Anonymous said...

Very pretty!

Anonymous said...

Looks like fun--great looking socks!

Melody

WildflowerWool said...

Yes, dyeing is labour intensive for sure. Your skeins turned out great!!