Dyet Yarns: Adventures in Fiber » recycle

Promotion for Deserving Yarn

Nuri — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:28:51 +0000

My very first sweater was knit from Plymouth Baby Grande Alpaca. This is a lovely yarn, but it is bulky alpaca! As might be expected from a new sweater knitter, I was unaware of many of the qualities of alpaca (incredibly warm, drapey, heavy) and did not choose an appropriate pattern to feature such lovely yarn. As a result, I ended up with this sweater (yes, it was eventually finished) that had ribbing and a turtleneck that were much too tight and held heat in like Viking torture sleeves.

This year I went through my sweaters and culled the collection down to the ones I really wear. I discovered that although this yarn is amazing and I was very attached to the sweater, I hadn’t worn it in two years because of the design flaws. As hard as it is to bring yourself to frog something you spent so much time on, I had to give this yarn a chance to be something better!

I spent some time browsing patterns and picked out one I thought would be much better suited to this yarn. Now I have something much more wearable!

This sweater is infinitely more wearable. I do not recommend a raglan pullover in bulky baby alpaca! That thing was HOT, and would have been too much heat even if it had fit perfectly. This cardigan can be worn open or buttoned, which gives me some air flow flexibility. It also has enough structure that it doesn’t depend on the yarn’s elasticity to keep its shape (which is good because alpaca has pretty much none). So yay for a successful yarn promotion!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Sneak Peek of New Cashmere Blend

Nuri — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:39:57 +0000

I’ve been doing a whole lot of dyeing lately; I am moving on July 4, and I have to get rid of my washing machine and dryer before the move. That means I won’t have them in my new apartment, which doesn’t have a hook-up for them. This will make my dyeing a little more difficult, since I don’t currently have a spin-dryer. I will get one when I can afford it. In the meantime, dyeing while I still can do it easily!

In that vein…

I give you Tequila Sunrise, a 55% cashmere 45% wool yarn. It’ll be up in the store soon!

I just LOVE the way cashmere takes up dye. It sucks it right up and the colors are vibrant and mix well. I’m still debating whether to keep some of this yarn for myself!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Rivulets Socks, Fin

Nuri — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:47:22 +0000

They are complete! My friend had a baby shower this weekend, which provided ample knitting time. I finished my second sock while there and wore them home with my sandals. I love how they turned out! The design looks a little different when you take out the spacing between pattern repeats, but it’s still pretty.

Next stop, toe-up Hedera socks!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Second Sock Saga

Nuri — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:52:26 +0000

Yesterday was a very slow day at work, so I got quite a bit of knitting done between that and waiting for my MMA class to begin. In fact, I stayed up late turning the heel on my second sock because I wanted to get through to the straight part of the leg. Naturally, I knit the exact same number of rows on the foot of the second sock as I knit on the first sock. After completing the heel flap, I tried the new sock on.

It was an entire inch too long.

This is what happens when you trust counting and don’t try it on! Apparently I was knitting the second sock significantly looser than the first one. Also, the toe felt funny. After hemming and hawing about whether I could rip partially back and fix it, I decided to just rip out the whole thing and start over. Five hours of knitting down the drain, and because I stayed up last night my hands are too sore to knit today. Ah well, it’ll get finished eventually.

At least I have something else to do while I wait! Last night I found (I had forgotten their existence) some cones of lovely yarn that my mother had given to me and started winding it up into 50 g hanks. I have some brand new heavy lace/light fingering weight Shetland wool as well as a few different lace weight silk/wool blends. I also have a lovely recycled white wool/cashmere blend waiting to be colored. They will be fun to dye!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Rivulets Sock, part 1

Nuri — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:07:16 +0000

One sock down, one to go. I made significant modifications to the pattern, considering the gauge difference between yarn and pattern and the way my foot is shaped. I have pretty small feet, but my ankle and heel are fairly large. I took notes on the pattern changes, so I guess we’ll see if I can produce a second sock that looks even remotely similar.

Check out how pretty the yarn looks in this pattern!

This sock is very thick and comfy; I can’t wait to finish the second one so I can wear them around the house!

That reminds me; new yarns available in the store! I’ve put up a few skeins of the yarn I used for my purple striped socks, and there is also a single skein of a colorway similar to the one I am using for the Rivulets socks. There are also a few lace weight yarns. Go check them out!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Sock Yarn Success!

Nuri — Thu, 21 May 2009 15:07:52 +0000

I have two things to report on before I go off on a wild convention run this weekend. The first is that I successfully dyed four (FOUR!) batches of recycled yarn that I think will work great for socks. I used two different kinds of base yarns (two sweaters). The first is the one I wrote about in the last post. The light pink sweater that unraveled easily and smoothly ended up in 4 hanks, and I dyed two of them (for me! Yarn for ME!). Here’s how they came out, with a hank of the original pink color for comparison:

The first is a medium blue color with speckles of purple. After dyeing the yarn the base blue color, I dripped some extra dye over the hank and let the colors break on the yarn. It gave me quite a nice effect! I can’t wait to see how it knits up. I dyed this specifically with Wendy D. Johnson’s Rivulets Socks in mind.

The second is a coral-orange semisolid that I love. I haven’t decided what sock pattern to make with it yet. I’m sure I’ll get some inspiration somewhere.

In the mean time, check out what I’ve been doing with the other batch of sock yarn I dyed!

This was just going to be a swatch, but the yarn was so soft and pretty that it just sort of turned into a sock. And…It turned out to be self-striping! I LOVE how this yarn turned out. It is an incredibly soft wool/angora blend, and it has 10% nylon for durability. I have 2 more skeins of this color and 2 skeins in a different colorway (purple and gold). They’ll be up in the Etsy store at some point.

I have decided that 75 g is the perfect amount of sock yarn for me. The sock pictured above took less than 35 g of yarn. I am curious as to how much yarn other people have left over from a 100 g skein when they knit socks. Are we wasting 25 g of yarn when we make regular-sized socks? Obviously cables will use more yarn and lace may use a little less, depending on the pattern.

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Recycled…Sock Yarn?

Nuri — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:52:37 +0000

It’s fairly rare to discover a sweater that has the correct (in my opinion) fiber content and weight for sock yarn. Up until now, I have been of the opinion that sock yarn is the only yarn I am likely to buy new rather than recycle. I have been debating offering new skeins of hand-dyed sock yarn in the store along with the recycled yarn. If anyone has any opinions on that, feel free to comment and let me know. I’d have to change my intro that says all my yarns are reclaimed, but I don’t think that’s a major problem.

Back to the point – I found a sock yarn sweater. It was already in my stash. I unraveled it (it unraveled like a dream). It is a very light pink color yarn somewhere between fingering and sport weight. It’s a blend of Merino wool, a little Angora, and lambswool with 10% nylon. The only problem is that it’s not superwash, but I can work with that. I decided to try dyeing the skeins of this yarn (there are 4) individually and keeping a few to try out recycled yarn on socks.

I have refrained from using recycled yarn for sock yarn mostly because people have told me that they like their sock yarns to have a tight twist. I thought this would add to the elasticity and smooshiness of the sock, so I agreed. Being pretty scienficially-minded, I now wonder if I was too hasty. I should, of course, test a variety of yarns before writing anything off as unuseable. So now I am going to test how well recycled yarn can work for socks! Last night I dyed one skein a nice peachy coral color and another skein a semisolid medium blue with purple speckles. I played around with my dyeing techniques because hey, this yarn was super-cheap! I love how the blue yarn came out. Of course the final test will be how it knits up, bit I think I’ll use that technique more often!

Pictures to come once I finish the aftercare for the yarn and knit up some gauge swatches.

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Orange and Blue!

Nuri — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:16:09 +0000

The Fire In The Sky colorway is officially launched! I love the way these colors mix. This colorway has long runs of blue and orange separated by brief spurts of purple. I’m not usually a huge fan of the blue/orange combination, but I think this time it came out perfect!

My original inspiration for this colorway was the wildfires that have been raging all around the world. Some of my friends in California and Australia have been affected, and there was recently a big fire in South Carolina that hit pretty close to home. My undergraduate education was in Forest Management, and we spent a decent chunk of time on fire management and control. Seeing flames jump into the canopy of a forest and flare up against the sky is both beautiful and terrifying. I don’t think this yarn is going to be terrifying (at least I hope not!), so we’ll see if we can stick to beautiful.

(Click to go to the Etsy Listing)

The 4 skeins I posted are dyed on 100% Merino Wool and washed in Kookaburra Wool Wash with tea tree oil. They smell and feel lovely!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Fire in the Sky

Nuri — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:43:26 +0000

Here’s a picture of the yarn I dyed last week all wrapped up! This is actually the 4 skeins that I dyed all together, so it’s a pretty huge wad of yarn. It’ll be divided up individually, wrapped up prettily, and listed in the store very soon.

I love this colorway bunches! It’s going to be a permanent colorway, although I suspect the results will differ slightly from yarn to yarn depending on the sweater I use. The best part of this batch is that the yarn is incredible. It’s a pretty decent weight (haven’t measured WPI yet, but it’s at LEAST worsted) and it’s 100% soft wool that passes my cheek test. I’m still debating whether to keep a skein for myself.

This colorway was originally inspired by all the wildfires that have broken out recently. It’s amazingly scary and beautiful at the same time to see flames raging against the sky. I remember having those same feelings when I was studying fire control as part of my Forest Management major in college. A raging wildfire is one of the most terrible, frightening, and absolutely awe-inspiring things I have ever seen.

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Ahhhh…Dye High

Nuri — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:42:15 +0000

Every now and again I get a craving to dye fiber, and I just don’t feel right until I do it. Lately with all the “disasters” and whatnot going on, the craving starting coming on again. I KNOW I’m supposed to be working on making shirts and jewelry to sell at cons, but it got bad enough that last night I finally broke down and spent some time dying a sweater’s worth of nice recycled 100% Merino wool.

It’s a colorway I’ve been rolling around in my mind for awhile and will likely make again. I’m calling it “Fire in the Sky.” It’s an Orange/Blue/Purple mix on a 6-foot repeat. It’s so very pretty! I love the way it looks hanging up in hanks. I had originally planned to have yellow in there, but in the middle of dyeing it I decided the yellow wouldn’t work with the color combination. It turned out just lovely without it. I’ll have some pictures up soon!

Speaking of pictures, once I get this new yarn skeined up and labeled, I will be loading 2 new colorways into the store, so stay tuned!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.