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The result of the experimental purple-pink-orange dyeing had been a disappointment — for a moment, I considered not spinning it at all. It might turn out alright or it might turn out awful but, either way, it just wasn’t me. Why spend the time on it?
But, I wasn’t brought up to waste, so I spun it anyway — and I was even more disappointed when I did. The first bobbin was passable, with its gaudy-but-cheeky bright pink sections that really lifted the overall colour combination, and the long sections of pale pink that added softness…
But the second bobbin was just awful. Awful. It came out purple then orange then purple then orange. There was no bright pink at all, and the pale pink was almost totally lost in the spinning. It came out looking like a sweaty, stinky high school football uniform…
I despaired. I had planned on Navajo plying them but, whilst that might work passably well with the first bobbin, it would simply exacerbate everything that was wrong with the second. No, the key here was damage limitation — I’d have to try plying them together in the hopes that that could do something to make it all a bit less awful.
To my surprise, it did. It really did. In fact, plying them together created a yarn that was so beautiful, so sublime, and so amazingly gorgeous that I can’t stop looking at it. It has the colours of a stormy sunset. I just want to stick my faced into it and rub it all around. I am in love!
Yardage:
Large skein — 58 yards, 20 inches
Small skein — 32 yards, 26 inches
Even thought I wasn’t really satisfied with my last batch of dyeing, it taught me lessons nonetheless. I knew now that the Kool-Aid orange was far too intense for my purposes, and the purple was too deep. So this time I altered my tactics slightly, and decided to use primary colours to get the shades I wanted. I dipped one end of the roving in yellow for a while and the other end in blue, and then submerged the whole roving in red. When I pulled the results out of the crockpot, my heart leapt.
This was more what I had hoped for. This was beautiful!
I liked it so much that I skeined up some weaving yarn and dyed that as well…
Part of me was saying, “Just throw it all out!” My first foray into Kool-Aid dyeing had turned out just ugly, ugly, ugly. I was relieved that at least I’d thought to buy the cheapest roving I could find to start out on, but that was probably the only highlight of the whole experiment. Chucking it all out and forgetting it ever happened might be the best way forward!
But, looking at it, I realised that, although the purple and green were hideous together and the blue and red clashed jarringly, there was a possibility of salvaging this disaster. If I split them up and spun the blue with the green and the purple with the red, it might work.
I got out the wheel and got right to work. The first thing I noticed was that this was some tough roving. I’d bought it from a vendor at the Waynesburg Sheep and Wool Festival and, even as I was looking at it, the lady running the stall was trying to get me to buy another kind instead. “That one’s just not that nice,” she said, pointing to the wool and alpaca mix I was fingering. “This one over here is much better for spinning.” But I explained that I was looking for something really cheap try dyeing with and, besides, I was used to spinning with uncooperative wool.
I’d never spun with commercially prepared roving in the UK, let alone top. I learned to card when I first learned to spin, but quickly decided I just couldn’t be fussed to do it, and started spinning directly from the raw fleece instead. It wasn’t easy at first — raw fleece is full of little knotted bits and vegetable matter (and very occasionally a dead bug or a lump of poo) — but my fingers soon became adept at sorting the wool as I drafted. Spinning in the grease was highly economical as well, because the bottom has fallen out of the UK wool market — it often costs the farmers more to transport their shorn fleeces to market than they actual make from the sale — and I could get a good (whole) fleece for about £5, and very often for free just for asking. Before long, I was able to spin an even, fine single direct from the raw fleece.
But there are no such bargains to be had in the US — fleeces here cost upwards from $40 — and, with my daughter showing signs of a possible allergy to lanolin, I’ve switched to spinning from roving and top. At first, I didn’t like it — where was the challenge? It’s all so smooth, it’s almost pre-drafted! But I’ve quickly gotten used to it — spoiled, in fact. It’s so easy and… oh yes, so clean! It doesn’t fight my fingers, it gives in so seductively, and raw fleece never came in the glorious colourways I’ve been collecting lately.
So it came as a bit of shock to be handling such an unruly wool again. This roving didn’t want to submit — it chucked slubs and knots and vegetable matter at me. And it argued, it stuck… it annoyed me. I suddenly realised just how spoiled I’ve become!
But I carried on, let the slubs pass through for character while my fingers tried to remember what to do, and somewhat proudly finished spinning my first attempt at Kool-Aid dyeing. It isn’t a nice yarn — it’s too rough and scratchy — and there’s not much of it, but the I think the result has clawed back some measure of success from disaster.
On the way home from MDSW, I realised with a start that the following weekend was Mother’s Day and, having just finished and falling in love with my cobbled-together version of Mary-Heather’s Simple Things shawlette, I decided to quickly knit one up for my mum.
I cast on the next day, using the Rumba yarn I’d picked up at MDSW and knit as fast as two demanding toddlers would let me. Big needles (8mm) helped it move along quickly, and I finished it just in time.
Unlike the previous version, I loved this yarn, loved the way the deep raspberry colour melted into the caramel brown. And I kept asking myself if Mum wouldn’t really be perfectly happy with a hastily bought bottle of perfume…? But I was a good daughter and gave it away on the Sunday. Mum was suitably delighted, which softened the blow.
I note, however, that she hasn’t worn it once so far — never mind that the weather has never dipped below 70 since — and if I don’t see it round her neck soon, I may be stealing it back!
I love the way the yarn overs came out using bigger needles. There’s something really graphic about the big stitches, the big holes. It looks to me a little like this scarf has a spine… looks a bit like the skeleton of a dinosaur in the natural history museum. That’s really weird, but I kinda like it!
As I said when I started this blog, I never finish anything, knitting-wise. I have hundreds, thousands… nay, millions of unfinished projects lurking in dark corners of the house, all hoping that the sun will shine on them again one day. It’s just get so excited by trying new things — new stiches, new patterns, new shaping, new yarn — that it’s impossible to resist until I’ve finished whatever I’m currently working on, and I find myself casting on something new — just to see — before the current project is even cool on the needles. And that’s ok, because I don’t knit for the final product — I’m a process knitter. It matters less to me to be that I come away with something at the end than that I just enjoy the knitting. The click-clack of the needles, and feel of the yarn in my hands, the smell of the wool, and the rhythm of the stitches… That’s what it’s about for me.
But when I saw Mary-Heather’s Simple Things shawlette, I wanted it. I wanted it. And that was a strange sensation — and one I didn’t trust. But I realised the project was small enough and quick enough that I might actually have a shot at getting it done before I moved on, like a drifter, to the next shiny thing that caught my eye.
No pattern available yet, but I studied Mary-Heather’s photos and reckoned I could work out at least a good approximation of the pattern. And so I looked through my stash for some decent yarn to try it out with, and cast on.
The funny thing is, I didn’t like the yarn as I was knitting. I wasn’t sure I liked it in the ball, but the more I knit with it, the less I liked it. The colours jarred. And pooled. It felt scratchy. It was too marroon-y, and I didn’t like the yellow or the orange bits. Time and again I thought to myself that I would just rip it all out and start over with another yarn… but I never had one to hand at that moment, so I carried on.
I finished it on the way home from MDSW and here’s the crazy thing about this scarf: as soon as I put it on, I loved the yarn. Loved it! Couldn’t stop looking at it! Then I took it off and looked at it and… I didn’t like it. Put it back on, and loved it… Took it off again, and didn’t like it.
And, I still don’t like it. Until I put it on — and then I love it. I just totally don’t get that.
When I first tried it, I wasn’t expecting Navajo plying to produce a completely different yarn from regular plying, but it does. I tried it on my drop spindle, using multi-coloured singles (where I had spun a little purple for a while, and then switched to a little blue, and then green, and so on).
When I plyed these singles in the normal way, I got a barber-pole effect across the whole yarn like this:
But, when I Navajo plyed it, the yarn came out multi-coloured in sections, like these two:
Both from the same singles, but what a difference!
It’s logical, of course. In regular plying, you are bringing two separate singles together and, if they are different colours at the point where they ply together, then that barber-pole striping effect is what happens. Whereas in Navajo plying, you are taking one single and doubling it over on itself (well, tripling it over, actually) so, in a multi-coloured single like I was using, you are plying like with like for a while, then switching to another colour and plying a new like with like, and so on.
I find the difference really intriguing, and I can’t decide which result I like better. Which do you like more?
Navajo plying… It’s something I’d heard about but just couldn’t wrap my head around — how can you get a multi-strand ply out of only one single? And, it kind of scared me.
I’m back to spinning after several years’ break (I found I couldn’t balance a baby, a grab-everything toddler, and a wheel spinning at high velocity all at once) and have been experimenting with plying. It’s not something I’ve done a lot of before, because I always spun for weaving, so the process stopped at singles. Plying those singles is something I’ve only done a couple of times — years ago — and I wasn’t feeling confident in reviving my skills in normal plying, let alone learning something that sounds as downright weird as Navajo plying does.
But I watched a few instructional videos on YouTube and was surprised to discover that it wasn’t nearly as frightening a process as I’d feared. Within minutes, I’d got the concept in my head and my wheel out from the corner and, after a somewhat shaky start, I hit my rhythm and that was it — I was off!
And what’s more, I was really enjoying it. I found it was much easier to control the tpi (twists per inch) with Navajo plying than I’ve found with regular plying, and I find the three-ply it produces much more finished-looking than the two-ply I’m used to.
I enjoyed it so much, I couldn’t stop plying. I finished the denim-coloured yarn, and then moved onto some silk that had been on the bobbin for… well, probably two years, and then onto every other single I could find. What was I worried about? Navajo plying is fab!
The roving that spun up so beautifully is from CosyMakes.
You might think I’d not been doing anything, but I have — I just haven’t been talking about it much. In fact, I’d rather let the pictures do the talking…
I finally dug my wheel out of the moving boxes. Here’s the result: handspun Merino top from Stony Mountain Fibers…
I’ve also been doing a lot of spinning on the beautiful spindle that Sheila at Journeywheel picked for me. Here’s my first attempt at plying on a spindle…
Here’s the chunky jacket I was designing for my daughter, using Creme Puff yarn from Decadent Fibers, and it was going fantastically when… when… I realised I can’t find the second skein!!! It wasn’t in the moving box I thought it was, and the garage is full to bursting with boxes… it could be in any of them! This has been quite a blow, and I have completely lost my knitting mojo. I just can’t find anything I feel like knitting now…
And here’s the Debbie Bliss baby cardigan I was working on. It’s come out so lovely, and I am really pleased with it.
Really, this cardi should have had an unhappy ending, because my daughter would have surely outgrown it long before I finished it, if it weren’t for the beating she’s taken from her food allergies that stopped her growing for seven months. Getting her diagnosed and managing her condition has been a really difficult experience for her and for me, but the silver lining is that she stayed small enough that this cardi fits her perfectly now! It feels a bit sacriligious to say that though…
It’s every knitter’s secret fantasy, isn’t it? To run your own yarn shop… to be surrounded by all that wool and silk and cotton… and lovely wooden needles and all those fun bits and bobs that go along with knitting. To make your life’s work out of your life’s passion — what joy!
Here’s your chance: Yarnsmith is up for sale. Brooke is having her second baby soon and will be focusing on that for the time being. Here are all the details from her email:
Many of you may already know that yarnsmith is for sale. I’m expecting another child next March and have decided that I don’t have the mental or physical space for it any more. This is a great opportunity for anyone who is interested in a viable business that will allow them the flexibility of working on their own from home.
The sale includes £3,500 worth of stock, a fully functioning website, a recognised brand including electronic logo, stationary, and advertising designs, and an existing customer base and mailing list. The asking price is £6,500.
If you are interested, please contact me by e-mail on brooke@yarnsmith.co.uk.
In the meantime, we are still taking orders on remaining stock by e-mail or phone. Everything is 20% off of the website price and payment is by cheque or paypal.
Thank you,
Brooke McConochy
www.yarnsmith.co.uk
For those of you who aren’t in a position to buy your yarn-shop dream right now, don’t miss that 20% discount tucked in amongst the details above.
Brooke, I wish you the best of luck with the rest of your pregnancy and with the birth. You are in for quite a ride, but it’s a wonderful one!
