The Knitting Fiend

Yesterday was a such a bright sunny day; I felt like dyeing! So I did. Now I’ve done dyed (. . . a mess of yarn!)

The first and only time I dyed yarn, tutors were present: I hand painted. This time, my tutors weren’t here, so I did something easier: solid colored yarn. Still, I did do one adverturous thing. I’d heard you can create sophisticated colors by starting with buff colored or greyish yarn, so I decided to search for some undyed yarn in buff or grey tones.

Natural undyed yarns haven’t been “in” recently, so I had a little trouble. Luckily, since I love the Taiga Goat Down, so I checked Taiga out. It turns out they have expanded their choices, I found and purchased a yarn called “Unusual” in shade 1507. (It’s 100% goat down, and costs $5.75 a 470 m a 100 gram skein. ) (more…)

I found the perfect project to knit using my first hand dyed yarn! It’s the Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf by Karen Baumer¹ I discovered the pattern when Betty, KitKat’s mom, was knitting it during a Thursday night meeting of “The Diabolical Knitters”. On last Thursday’s meeting, I asked Betty where she found the pattern, and, organized person that she is, she had the pattern with her!

The next day, I cast on and started knitting my scarf. It’s finished now! See?

Now I bet you are wondering what the yarn looked like before I knit it up. But did I take a photo of my hand dyed yarn before winding it up and casting on? No!

For those of you who want to imitate my scarf to get this color effect, I started with 1 hank of KnitPicks superwash merino (220 yds/ 100 grams.) When dyeing, laid the wet hank out and dyed one edge with a “red” color and another edge with “yellow”. (Knit picks has several reds– I don’t know which I used.) Near the center, I sort of blended them and massaged the yarn. It turned “burnt orange”.² I ended up with a hank that was red on one edge, yellow on the other and orange in between.

Since I was a beginner, I only dyed one skein in this colorway. That meant I needed to find a 1 skein project. Luckily, I found one.

Anyway, the scarf pattern is beautiful and it’s easy to knit up. It’s all garter stitch worked in short rows.

The only “problem” with the pattern is the yardage needs are a bit vague. Karen suggests you can knit a 4′ x 5″ scarf with 200 yds. Well… yeah… but in what gauge? I knit a 35″ x 5″ scarf using 220 yds which means I needed more yardage than suggested. (But of course, I knit at a gauge of 5.4 st/inch. It may be that Karen uses thicker yarn and/ or knits using a looser right ; that would result in a longer scarf using 200 yds?)

Anyway, since I want to make this scarf again, and I want a better yardage estimate, I decided to write a yardage estimator. My estimator is based on my scarf and a bit of “yarn use theory”. You can enter your gauge, desired length and width, and the estimator will predict the yardage required. (Since you we all know you aren’t going to knit a swatch, the calculator provides a few extra estimates.)

Give it a try! (more…)

Shhh…. I can’t talk about this scarf until after I describe the activities that took place during a super secret meeting of “The Diabolical Knitters” which took place Oct. 17, 2006. This activity took place at a spot referred to as “my house.”

On that dreadful Saturday, demonic knitters invaded my neighborhood; they took over my empty garage, set up tables and cooking equipment and began to concoct special brews.

One knitter, who goes by the innocent sounding name “Kathy”, (who seemed to have specialized knowledge about these activities) was photographed measuring out colored powders; she mixed these powders with boiling water, stirred and then placed brew in various plastic or glass containers.¹ Each was labeled with mysterious code words like “Vermillion” or “Teal”. The knitters referred to these concoctions as “dye”.

While “Kathy” mixed these brews, other knitters were instructed to “soak their yarn”. Each knitter filled a bucket with water and a bit of Dawn dishwashing detergent, then dropped hanks of yarn in the bucket. The buckets were left undisturbed for about half an hour. I set a timer to help our busy coven know when the half hour was up.

While the yarn soaked, another knitter named “Mickey” arrived, carrying all sorts of equipment: A microwave oven, two crock-pots, things called kniddy-knoddies and “the contraption”.

Mickey instructed KitKat, Doree and Betty to begin winding hand spun yarn on “the contraption”. They obediently set to work and began creating the world’s longest hank of yarn. As they worked, the three cast a spell by repeatedly in-canting this words: “Is this really going to work?” The incantation was always followed by loud laughs.
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