I cleaned up my craft stuff this weekend, and the pile of yarn isn't that appalling on an objective scale, but IS out of hand in terms of how little time I've spent on yarn-using stuff, which I learned... right after ordering a giant pile of yarn. Because I'm pretty sure i don't have much, and need more, right? SO, I finished whipping through the lost souls skull crochet pattern. Which was a fun pattern! I liked it a lot. The shawl turned out smaller than I would have ideally wanted, but i was out of yarn, and the yarn was preeeetty cheap and scratchy and not worth hunting down to keep going. It's still usable, and I'll probably do this again and bigger if the right yarn comes my way, but for now I'm going to keep speedrunning patterns to keep collecting xp before my attention span fails me and I remember my many other crafts on hold :p Spoiler
holy shit that's rad i saw a skull pattern shawl once before but that one looks a lot better. i'm definitely gonna make one for my sister!
I'm working on two rugs for my room, because it's Cold As Balls and I need something comfy and warm for my feet to step on first thing in the morning. (Although I've got some foam floor tiles in here now, which is helping a lot.) One is a crocheted rug, which is...probably gonna take a while, so my mom suggested I braid one out of scrap fabric. So I'm currently working on that, pinning it to my bedframe and braiding the fabric so that it'll wrap nicely. The crocheted rug is gonna be in a bunch of colours (I'm using it as a stash-buster for all the acrylic I have that has no other purpose), starting with grey, and the braided rug is blue/cream/floral at least to start with - I may have to replace one of the colours with something else as and when I run out of that fabric.
I just spent two hours getting increasingly frustrated & doubting my sanity while I tried and failed to start a knitted-on edge on this shawl... only to realize, finally, that I've.been trying to go the wrong direction this entire. Fucking. Time. Ughhhhhhhh
Okay, advice time! I got two country classics dyes to use on my first spinning project ever because it's "natural white" merino and I never had anything specific in mind for it Thing is, I'm not sure how to go about dying the skein so I get these two colors alternating? It has to sit in the color boiling according to the instructions. idk if I fucked up and should go get a different type of dye and save these for unprocessed fiber?
Would you maybe be able to keep some of the skein out of the dye bath, eg by wrapping some of it around a spoon that's hanging over the pot? That way you could let one half boil in one colour, let it cool, swap the dye in the dye bath over, and then dye the undyed side.
Not sure I want a half/half dye job, I'd like the color run to be shorter than that. Alternating in quarters, at the very least.
so basically I'm thinking, fold in half once, fold in half twice, keep "upper half" out and dip "bottom half" in, it should come out as p u r p l e b b l l u u e e p u r p l e
Hmm I'll need to find someway to hold it up or of the pot. One that hopefully isn't standing over the pot hiding the skein on a chopstick (I mean I'll do it, but I'd rather something else).
You have a few other options, maybe! It sounds like your bottles of dye are only giving instructions for kettle-dyed semi-solids - I've never used country classic, but there's other techniques like low-immersion dye & handpainting that let you have more control over where the color goes. I can try to dig up some resources later (on phone/just now woke up) but I know at the least there's youtube videos for tons of dye techniques.
Yeah, they're little jars of powder so not a premixed liquid dye. What ever I do with it, I'll have to prep the dye the same way I think??
I'm actually really glad I looked up Country Classic before I posted, because your dye jars are actually different than I expected! You're working with an all-in-one acid dye - that is, there's pigment AND acid in your jar. (I've only worked with liquid-based pigments that I have to add acid to.) Most tutorials are for dyes where you add your own acid, but you SHOULD be able to use the same dye application + processing techniques with dyestocks that are mixed to the instructions on your jar. For handpainting with powder bases, this looks like a good tutorial - she's using Dharma dyes, so if you leave the vinegar out of the presoak, you should be able to follow the rest of the tutorial as given! In general, when you're working with multiple colors on one skein, any method where you put dyestocks ONTO the yarn instead of adding yarn to a pot of already-mixed dye will work - you'll get different effects depending on how much water you have in your pot. More water = more dye moving around, more color diffusion/mixing. Less water = less dye moving around, possibly more variation within each color, a need to keep a closer eye on your yarn so it doesn't dry out.
Yes! Being a two in one dye is why I got it. One less step for me to worry about. I also found a really good hand painting tutorial video using this dye on the Paradise Fibers website (the place I got them from). He's using it on roving, but it should work on already spun yarn too I'd imagine.
update: this is so much fun the gremlin cat we are sitting likes the spindle too much tho so ill have to work around that/wait til hes not around but theres something rly satisfying about finding the best way to even the wool as u go
