Dyet Yarns: reuse, recycle, reinvent!

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.

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.

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.

I Have Been Remiss…

Nuri — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:18:56 +0000

…in announcing why I have been absent for two weeks!

I am moving from North Carolina to New York this year so that I can attend law school. Yes, they have law schools in North Carolina, but not the one I wanted to go to. So I am moving. Moving 12 hours away from your current home can present a logistical problem, particularly when you need to find a roommate as well as an apartment. Luckily, I managed to find a geeky roommate that was more local than me. Over the past two weeks, we have been in contact working out the details.

Last weekend was a huge weekend for me. Not only was I vending at a convention (I sell T-shirts and gamer jewelry as well as yarn), but I also had my prospective roommate up in NY looking for apartments. I was double-booked running the booth and discussing details with her on the phone. The result of all this was a) sales and b) an apartment, lease, and moving date! Yay! That sounds great, right?

Well, it is. Mostly. The only problem is that I need to move at the beginning of July instead of August (which was my previous plan) to avoid paying rent in two places at once. Okay, that’s cool. I can work with that…

Except I have a full-time job, and I had already told them I would work through July. Okay, so negotiations proceed, and we end up changing my end date to the end of June. They’ll switch me over to hourly, and I can work from NY on an as-needed basis. Great!

Except that I lose a month’s salary by leaving early and they likely won’t have terribly much for me to do in July. Sooo…

Now I get to apply to temp agencies and see if they can get my a job in White Plains to make ends meet for July and August. I don’t think I would need a full-time position, but I definitely need to bring in some additional cash. I’ll be stepping up production and listing of my yarns as well (I have a bunch right now waiting to be labeled and listed), so keep your eyes on the store!

I look forward to meeting a bunch of new knitters when I move. Hey, do you think I could get a job at a local yarn store? That would be the pinnacle of awesomeness. Although at this point I’d probably settle for anything that pays the bills for a few months.

…Oh yes, and I need to remember to get my E-Z-Pass. I’m not used to living somewhere with tolls!

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

The Lace of My Dreams

Nuri — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:54:32 +0000

Last night I had a dream. This dream involved many things, but the part I remember the most vividly is picking up a half-finished lace wrap that I was working on and showing it to my mother. Somehow the lace looked perfectly blocked already, despite the project being unfinished. She ooh’d and aah’d over it as I showed her the pattern repeats and the little subtleties. I had a huge feeling of accomplishment! The weirdest part?

I have never seen this lace pattern in my life, nor am I working on anything even remotely similar. I have no idea what it was!

Perhaps my right-brain is trying to tell me something. Perhaps my next project will involve figuring out the pattern for that lace design and writing it up. I was thinking about the new pink and teal lace weight yarn I have before I went to sleep. Of course, first I need to finish my Interlude Wrap! I’ve been letting it sit in my Zuma in favor of other projects that require less attention. Maybe it will get some attention next week after Con Carolinas this weekend. For now, I’m busy making shirts!

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.