The Color that Made My Heart Skip a Beat

Guess who the lucky girl is today? Me, Me, Meeeee!
I received this yarn in the mail today.  It's from new shop, "Doodles in String" with Etsy.
The color is called Sweetness, it's 80/10/10 SW Merino/Cashmere/Nylon , Fingering Weight, 435 yards/100grams.

I'm not easily attracted to blue due to years and years of wearing blue school uniforms.  This yarn had convinced me that blue is an amazing color.  It has slightly more green in it than my camera could capture.  And it has some very subtle spots of yellow. 

When I opened up the package, my heart skipped a beat. I expected some beautiful yarn, but this feels so special. It's now my new favorite color.  It reminds me of sea glass.  It also has the perfect shade.  It's the blue I didn't know that I'd been waiting for it for a long time....  

Now I'm completely torn between trying to come up with something worthy of it and saving it so I can pet its super softness.

  

New Yarn Love

from left to right: Lark in Bird's Egg, Chickadee in Honey, Chickadee in Petal, and Finch in Chanterelle

I splurged.

After staring at the screen again and again for weeks, I finally bought some yarn from Quince and Co.
The package arrived today.  LOVE!

For a while I'd come to the realization that with sweaters, I generally preferred solid color over hand-dyed yarn (though not always, but I found myself feeling more disappointed when tones were too varigated in a sweater.)  I was also drawn towards slightly muted colors over highly saturated palette.  The yarns that came in the package answered all my wants and needs.

I even bought a color card. Based on the colors I saw on its website, I had a feeling I'd want more in the future.

This time I did not order sweater quantity for any of the colors. However, I can easily see myself wanting a sweater in each color! Not to mention all the fun colorwork I can do with the range of colors.  I'm already dreaming a dress in Sparrow (linen) that according to the company website, a new shipment is due any time now.

These yarns are soft but not like cashmere/merino soft.  I suspect they will pill less and add a bit more structure to garments if knitted at a good gauge.

A Day in the Kitchen, and Not Cooking

Yay, the dye and the yarn I ordered arrived.  I was busy in the kitchen all day today.  Nope, I didn't cook.  I'm really a horrible cook.  Every time I mentioned that I'm going to make some food, Paul would immediately head to the kitchen and start cooking, that's how horrible my cooking is.  I was playing with yarn and dye.  This time instead of finding things in the cupboard to use as dye, I actually bought some natural dyes from Botanical Colors, and some yarn from Dharma Trading Co. 

I really like natural dye and how organic the colors do look.

The yarn I used were the  Wildfoote Luxury Socks.  I ordered 2, and each order was actully 2 skiens (and  430 yards each.)

I used alum as mordant.  An,d for the first time I used iron to chancge color.  Wow, how fun was that seeing the color changed and deepened instangly.

Here are the results.

From left to right:
The two dark reddish brown are first mordant with alum,  then dye with cutch for 2 hours, then added iron, and then threw in madder for the red and dyed for another 20 minutes.

The yellow one was mordant with alum, dyed with weld for an hour, then after I fished it out, I wanted it more intense, added more weld and dyed for another 30 minutes.  Dumped the bath, and pour a bit of the cutch/iron/madder dye water into the pot and dipped the yarn in for about 15 seconds.

The greenish yellow was mordant with alum, dyed with weld for an hour, then dyed with osage orange, weld, logwood gray for 15 minutes, then put in the same more weld pot with the previous skein for 30 minutes.

 I am addicted even though the process does take a long time.
Now I have to come up with some project ideas for these yarns.

Kashair

Elann Limited Edition Kashair
Fiber Content: 60% Wool/25% Cashmere/ 15% Acrylic
Care: HandWash, Dry Flat
Gauge: 20st/4" 4.0mm (US 6)
Yardage 175m (191 yards) per 50g ball
Price: $3.48

OK, if you hand me this yarn and let me guess its fiber content, I don't think "cashmere" would be my first guesses. And if you let me knit it up, I may actually guess it's part cotton. Though that is obviously a wrong answer, I could, however, tell that it's a mutt, a blend of different fibers. But I'm no expert in textile or fiber. My experience with cashmere is so limited. Hmmm... I wonder what would it be like to hug a cashmere sheep....

Then if you proceed to tell me that one of its content is cashmere, I would've guessed the cashmere sheep had accidentally fell into a hot spring and enjoyed a long, hot bath and became felted.

Just a thought, instead of making blend, can people just breed mutt sheep so their wool is already perfectly blended, like a mixed breed of merino and cashmere? But of course my favorite blend would be nearly impossible except in science fiction: merino sheep mix with silkworm.

This yarn string looks felted, and to me knitting with it was like knitting with cotton or cotton chenille. Soft cotton that is, not one of those stiff cotton ropes. The yarn is uneven in texture, which means not super fast knitting. It also means the resulting fabric has more of an organic look. It was definitely interesting to me. I'd never worked with anything like it before. Feeling the yarn (yes, I rub yarn against my neck for scratchy test... the good ones can make me purr...) well, I didn't purr with this skein, but I could tell its itchy factor is very low, could be non-existent.

This yarn also looks matte, but rather cozy looking.

Elann recommended #6 needles, so I automatically went down one size because I'm a very loose knitter. I was getting the recommended gauge of 20 st=4", but I found stitches to be way too loose and open, the knitted fabric was too ugly even for me. This was not doing any justice to the sheep so I ripped back the swatch and re-knitted with #4. The result was much better at 21 st x32 rows.

Before Blocking (CO 24 sts.)

I filled the sink with mostly cold water and a splash of warm water (it's still cold, just not icy cold) and left the swatch in the water for about 25 minutes. This time I actually remembered to take it out instead of letting it sit there for hours like I usually do.

When I fished it out from the water, the yarn looked even more felted. That was some drastic change in look. I had a mental cartoon image of the sheep having those curly hair that frizzes like crazy with even the slightest humidity in the air. The stitches evened out a lot. I didn't pin the edges 'cause Iwas curious to see how will the swatch dry.

Swatch drying

It's interesting that one may be able to achieve the look of felted object without the garment being stiff. At this point, I may be tempted to make some cozy looking socks with it. Or a hat, or a neck warmer. Because it's not one of those smooth, fast knitting yarn, I probably won't be too tempted to make a sweater out of it. But that's just my lazy side talking. I can see e a very fun looking cardigan with this yarn .... or maybe a robe.

The after blocking swatch is very soft, and the stitches bloomed and evened out. Now I feel like I can actually feel the cashmere in it. I may even purr a little. The curling edges flattened out, but it still need different stitches other than St st or hems to make edges lay completely flat.

It was a bit hard to count the stitches after blocking. It grew from 21 sts per 4" to 19 sts, and from 32 rows to 30-31 rows.

The color is not entirely solid. There is some very, very subtle tonal variation from the different fibers spun together. To me that is always more exciting as it gives the color a little more depth. The wool in it gives that typical slight, short halo of light hair on the surface. The blue skein I received is quite lovely. If I'm more imaginative, I may try to come up with a garment that can utilize its faded medium denim look of the knitted swatch. This swatch definitely pass the itchy test and is soft and cozy.

Note to this photo: comparing my swatch to the photo, my stitches looks a bit more even in person. The hightened contrast in the photo accentuated each stitch more. On my monitor, the color is bit darker than the actual swatch. My swatch really does look like faded denim.

after blocking