Rainbow Yarn - an Adventure in dyeing with Food Colouring

Have you seen the yarn from YarnInk.  She's a Canadian hand dyer.  I follow her on Instagram and everyday she puts up yarn that I have to resist buying.  I really hope that I'm getting some sock and shawl yarn from her this Christmas.  I gave my husband my list  . . . and he's pretty good at getting me stuff I like!

I keep looking at the Rainbow yarns she does.  My daughter would love a rainbow sweater, but at $27 a skein for DK weight yarn . . . .that's not happening.  So I decided to dye some myself.

I have 7 balls of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes that I had bought to make myself a white sweater.  After making another sweater for myself in Knit Picks Swish Worsted I decided I wanted to save up for a better quality yarn for something for myself.  For kids knits Knit Picks is great.

I wound 5 of the balls into skeins and followed the directions in this Knitty tutorial for how to dye using food colouring.

I got all my supplies organized before my son's nap and I had it ready to go in the oven just as he woke up.

 I left it in the oven until it reached 82 degrees Celsius.  The water looked all clear. 

I let it cool and rinsed it.  Hardly any colour came out.

Rainbow yarn skein yumminess!!  I'm so thrilled with how they turned out.  If I was to do this again I would use a bit less yellow dye . .  . to make it a bit mellower.  For the purple I used Kool aid, which I've done before but I would like to try purple food colouring and see if I get get a bit more variation in the purple.

For a sweater for a 3 1/2 year old girl!!  Perfect.

And I've already cast on  for her.  A pre-school size Baby Sunnyside Sweater. (It's the same pattern as I knit my last sweater, the Lady Sunnyside)  .  I'll have to call them Thunder and Rainbow sweaters since mine is grey.

The pattern calls for fingering weight yarn so I'm knitting the 3-6 month size using worsted weight yarn and 4.5 mm needles.  So far it looks to be the perfect size.  Happy Knitting.

Slightly disappointing yarn shopping

Yesterday was the Creativ Festival in Toronto.  I was so excited to go and look at yarn and fabric.  I wanted sock yarn and sweater yarn.  I've gone to the Creativ Festival several times in the fall and had such a great time and seen so much inspiration.  The spring show was quite disappointing. There were only 3 yarn stores.  The whole venue was less than 1/2 of the size of the fall show. 

I wanted to get sock yarn and needles for the socks.  I was able to get sock yarn . . . .but no needles.


 I wanted to get sweater yarn for a Burdock Cardigan . . .but none of the stores had enough to make a sweater in a worsted weight yarn.  Overall not really worth going.

The good news: I got sock yarn that I love.  The yarn is Tough Love Sock by Sweet Georgia Yarns.  The yarn is 80% superwash merino and 20% nylon.  Colour: ultraviolet.  And best of all it's hand dyed in Canada

The last pair of socks I knit was over 6 years ago and I never work them.  The cuff was too tight to put on and the the gussets bothered my feet. I threw them out.  I do have a few pairs of socks I knit 10 years ago and I still wear them today but they aren't perfect.  I'll show them to you next week.
 For my birthday I got the book Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks by Melissa Morgan-Oakes for my birthday and I have been waiting since March to get yarn and needles to start casting on for this method.  I think I'm going to like making 2 at the same time, being able to try them on and customize the sizing as I go up and casting off with Jeny's Surprising Stretchy Bind Off , which I've just learned recently and love how stretchy it is.

This is going to make my feet very happy!! Now I just have to wait for my needles to arrive in the mail so I can cast on for my 2-at-a-time toe up socks!  What is your favourite way to knit socks?