Two days at Knit Camp

The last two days have been fibre-crazy. I finally took a class at Knit Camp. On Thursday I took a Nordic Color class with Nancy Bush. The class started with some information about the cultural, historical, and fiber traditions of Estonia. This was obviously something she was really passionate about.

She taught us a really neat cast-on, and then the Estonian color technique. It's like embroidery, but with knitting.

My tension is pretty crap, and my needle size was too big (or rather it was the correct size, I just knit super loose) so I'm not too happy with the way it looks, but I still enjoyed the class. If you get the opportunity to take a class with her you should, she was lovely teacher - very enthusiastic and nice.

This morning I took a yarn dyeing class with Deb Tomkies. I had done kettle dyeing with natural dyes in the past, and played with kool aid dyeing a few times, but I was never really comfortable with hand-painting.

Here's a blury pic of the two skeins I did:
And here's the amazing yarns the class did:!


After the dyeing class I went over to the marketplace. The number of booths there was overwhelming! I passed by Annie Modesitt and Debbie Stoller, but I was too shy to talk to them. And then, after spending too much money, I sat down with some other knitters and continued working on the Jaywalker socks. So it was a lovely day.





I hear Jess and Cass are doing an Edinburgh meet-up thing, so might have an exciting knitting day tomorrow too! I hope you had a nice few days too.

How to dye wool and yarn with tea

Lately I've been needle felting hedgehogs. But before I even started the project I had a problem. I only had white wool in the house and I needed something darker for the snout. The easy solution: dyeing with tea.

This tea dyeing only works on natural fibers like wool and cotton.

Step 1:
Soak the wool/yarn in cold water with a little bit of soap for half an hour or so. Rinse the wool/yarn.


Step 2:
Heat up tea bags in a saucepan to a simmer. Here I've heated two fresh ones, with three that had been used half an hour before. They are the cheapest tea bags I could find. Generally speaking, the more wool you have, and the darker you want the dye to be, the longer it should brew and the more tea bags you should use.


Step 3:
After 5 or so minutes you should have a nice brown. But you can brew it for much longer than 5 minutes if you want a darker shade.


Step 4:
Pour the dye into a large pot, and add enough water so that the wool won't be too crowded, or it might dye unevenly. Place the already rinsed wool/yarn (still wet) into the large pot. Let it soak a bit. Don't swash the wool around a lot, especially if the dye is warm. If you jostle the wool a lot, you might end up felting it.


Step 5:
Take the wool out. The wet wool will looker darker than the final dry product. I rinse the wool, but you don't have to. The wool will get lighter if you rinse it. Pat the wool/yarn dry, then leave it to dry completely on a towel.


Step 6:
Admire your creation!

Dyed sweater

Here's my grandmother's sweater so far.

It's a cardigan, really. I'm planning on making the top of it a yoke (adding the sleeves to the body and knitting the rest in one piece). And no, I'm not gonna do a fairisle yoke, the variation of the skeins will probably be exciting enough. And yes, I do realize now that I have a light stripe. I tried switching between skeins for much of the sweater, but evidently I got bored. I'm wondering if I could a little dye directly on parts of that stripe, then microwaving it, a la kool aid style.

Dye Job

My first attempt at non-koolaid dyeing (I'll try and get a pic of the pink bunny slippers). The hope is that I'll dye and knit a sweater for my grandmother's birthday, January 14th.

I like the sound of deadlines as they woosh past.

Kool Aid Dye!

I'm making my little sister bunny slippers from Happy Hooker. I've decided to make it in white, then cool aid dye it pink.

Here's my first cool aid dye experiment, using Cherry flavor, though I think I'm going to use pink lemonade on the actual slippers.



We didn't have white vinegar at home, so I used apple cider vinegar.

I soaked the swatch in water first.

Then I mixed the vinegar and kool aid in a glass, put in the swatch, then microwaved it.

Suddenly the mixture boiled over, and I had to leave the room because of the smell.

I've since read that kool aid is already acidic, and vinegar isn't necessary. oh well