Dyet Yarns: Adventures in Fiber » socks

Oh Hai Blog!

Nuri — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:14:29 +0000

It has come to my attention that I have been neglecting you. I’m sorry. You fell by the wayside during my frenzy of learning about spinning, cranking through my stash, and dyeing new yarn and fiber. I really do care about you. But check out all the cool things I was doing when I wasn’t hanging out with you! I mean, at least you know I didn’t leave you for some floozy video game, right?

Most recently, I finished that ridiculous pair of socks I was making! They are soft and warm, and I love them even though they are ugly.

I also completed my first project in which I spun the yarn at a specific weight intended for a certain yardage to knit a specified pattern. My handspun Citron turned out great! The fiber came from Silver Sun Alpacas. It’s gorgeous and sparkly in person, but difficult to capture in a photograph.

The last project I’ll tell you about today (after all, we have many days ahead of us) is a follow-up from Rhinebeck. The lovely BFL/Silk I purchased from Gale’s Art spun up into the perfect gradiated lace weight skein; 900 yards of 2-ply! This is going to make a lovely shawl.

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

Socks!

Nuri — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:06:19 +0000

As I suspected, it is probably an injured rotator cuff. The doctors juiced me up on painkillers, and boy is that good stuff. So here are some socks!

Tippy toes of my Labyrinth socks from SG Traveler (mmmmmm)

Feet (yay heels!) of my On Hold socks with DiC Smooshy

And last my plain ol’ sunset socks with some bizarre CTH Sockittome (fun socks!)

Sweater update coming up later this week!

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

Knitting With One Hand Is Hard.

Nuri — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:11:54 +0000

Knitting with one hand is hard. Over the course of the Tour de Fleece, a spinning personal challenge that runs parallel to the Tour de France, I seem to have injured my left rotator cuff with overzealous spindling. This whole cycle of obsession and injury is alarmingly common in my life, and it really needs to be worked on. Right, self?

I made it through the heels of two On Hold socks (I knit socks 2-at-a-time so they both are the same) before succumbing to the orders to immobilize the arm and let the injury heel. Wendy Johnson is one of my absolute favorite designers; I just love the way her lace looks. I was feeling an urgent need to turn the heels of those socks and get the complicated part out of the way. Now it’s all easy knitting and I can wait to finish it until my shoulder heals.

I was also a little bit bad. I recently acquired a skein of Cherry Tree Hill Sockittome in Champlain Sunset, which is a rockin’ crazy colorway! These are convention socks for sure. Or “Oh frack it’s COLD” socks.

I will be getting pictures of all three of my in-progress socks once I can figure out how to do good photos with one arm. I’m sure I’ll think of something. In the meantime, I am going crazy not being able to knit or spin or anything! Argh!

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

Not Dead, but Getting There

Nuri — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:19:41 +0000

There is new yarn in the store since my last post; some sock yarns and some felting yarns. Gorgeous, bright colors! They are double-dip kettle-dyed, which essentially means they were put through 2 dye baths. All of my new sock yarns so far are named after food. I wonder if I was hungry when I named them?

I have been scarce for a month because of the move. It took SO much longer than expected, but luckily I had a few wonderful friends who helped out. I could not have done it without them.

We got to the new place and discovered that the stairway up to the 2nd floor apartment was a narrow hall with a 90-degree turn! It was terrible trying to get stuff up there, and we ended up tossing several large pieces of furniture because they wouldn’t fit.

And finally, on my way up to New York this weekend, I stopped to visit a friend in DC. My car window was smashed in overnight. Yay! This person must have been really stupid, because they stole a bag of yarn (and 2 cashmere sweaters) out of the back of the car and ran. They found nothing else of value, because I don’t leave valuables in the car. But they took my yarn. My YARN!

I guess they decided it wasn’t valuable to them (go figure) and dumped it, because we found the bag on the ground around the corner. everything in it was fine…I guess it’s a good thing for my car and my yarn that it didn’t rain. The window is supposedly getting fixed today.

This is why I hate moving.

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.

Heel Flap!

Nuri — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:00:46 +0000

This weekend, Wendy D. Johnson came to Charlotte and taught an awesome workshop on toe and heel techniques at one of the local yarn shops, Charlotte Yarn. I learned how to do the two things I have been really wanting to figure out; Judy’s Magic Cast On and a slip-stitch heel for toe-up socks.

I made a heel flap! Now that I can do it, I’ll be using this a lot. Short-row heels are fine, but they don’t seem to fit the back of my ankle very snugly.

I got a copy of Wendy’s book, Socks from the Toe Up, about a week ago, and it is chock-full of good techniques and cool patterns. I can’t wait to start them! I will have to wait just a little though; I started knitting Wendy’s Rivulets socks on Saturday after the class. After all, I dyed yarn specifically for them! The picture is a bit cruddy because it’s using my camera phone…the yarn is actually a kind of sea-blue color with purple speckles. You’ve seen it in previous posts.

I had to do a little math, since my gauge was 6 stitches/inch and the pattern calls for 8, but it looks like it’s working up just fine. I am getting pretty good at adjusting patterns for gauge since I am apparently a yarn rebel. Of course, the real test will be turning the heel. Will it fit right? I guess we’ll see!

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.