I have this lovely cone yarn -- the little sticker inside says COREN-INDIK, Inc. 3/2.9 equivalent, 68% cotton/25% wool/6% acrylic. It has aged in my stash for some years. I do know that I bought it in St. Cloud at a knitting machine store. That was when I had high hopes of being able to master my knitting machine. No washing instructions. So, I knit up a gauge swatch and first washed it by hand and lay it out to dry. Next I'm going to throw it through the washer and dryer to simulate "normal" washing treatment. Measuring the swatch at each step of the way. That way I know how to treat the final product. Don't want to spend hours knitting up a summer top to find out that washing it was a serious mistake. My thought is that this would be a nice top for me.Next decision is color. It is a taupe, on the cool side. I need it to be a warmer color to look good on me. I should dye it before I knit it. That means skeining the whole cone and dyeing it before I knit it up. Part of me whines at the extra work. But if I don't do it now, the chances of the dye striking evenly afterward isn't very good. If I dye with an acid dye, only the 25% wool will change. Will that be enough to affect a difference? If I do a union dye, will I get the color too strong or too uneven? And now the truth is out -- I am not a fearless dyer!
I suppose the last decision is to throw the cone back in the stash until I'm ready to knit Kim a sweater! That is, after all, always a possibility! Not to mention, that was why the yarn was originally purchased...
Also explains the 10 skeins of Heirloom brown yarn I bought some years ago. It is a cool brown, and I need it to be a warm brown. "All" I need to do is skein it up, overdye it, and it should be good. Right? And it sits in my stash. This is yarn Mom and Dad gave me for my birthday in 2005. Still there in the stash, waiting for dye courage.
1 comment:
I've done that, both hanking a cone and also a whole bunch of skeins to dye them, and also, one time, just going oh forget it and smooshing a whole bunch of skeins into the dyepot as is. The skein ends dangled and tangled all over the place, and the dyeing was fairly random (did I mention I shoved them in dry? As long as you think it's going to be uneven, might as well make it a virtue, right?) Actually, I liked that batch. I *think* the untangling of the ends was less work than hanking would have been, but then, I had thirty of the little turkeys. Cashmere/lambswool in traffic cone orange at a buck a ball. Now a lovely burgundy/almost black variegated.
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