So I have both successes and failures to show you but I have to stress that the failures are not complete failures because these have elements that please and displease giving me more of an idea what to aim for.
My newest is a silk roving down in lime, violet and gray. It is almost exactly what I aimed for. I tested the color of the dyebath by dipping Qtips into the dyes. I love spinning silk and I have an idea for a project using skeins of navajo plied silk in different colorways.
This will get spun up very quickly as I plan to use it with this yarn.
That is spun from this roving.
I'm getting good results from my new method of dyeing. Instead of handpainting the roving with syringes which is labor intensive, I used dye in Mason Jars placed in a water bath and covered. The silk is steamed. I am not too up on kitchenware nomenclature but the pan I use seems to be a roasting pan. It is a deep rectangular pan with an equally deep lid that easily fits over the Mason jars to create a seal.
I did use this method with not-so-good results for the following superwash roving.
The problem wasn't so much the Mason method I used but rather the way I tested my colors before dyeing. I had read in Deb Menz's book Color in Spinning that coffee filters were a good way to test color. Unfortunately, the way I did it gave me an inaccurate idea of the depths of the shades. I must have done something wrong but I am returning to my QTip method because it seems to work for me.
The colors came out so much darker than I wanted. They really weren't suitable for my original idea of Navajo plying so I spun 3 bobbins of the darkest portions of spruce, black, and brown and plied them together in the traditional way.
The twist is not set yet and the yardage is about 120 but half of the dyed roving went into my scrap bag for mix and match. The areas that weren't too dark were sparsely dyed and not very evenly.
I did successfully Navajo ply some cotton! I was told it couldn't be done because it breaks but after spinning it I really wanted to keep the color progression so I sprayed the skein with starch, let it dry and then Navajo plied it. I was a little alarmed to see a strange twisting when I examined the yarn but that was just the starch holding the twist in one direction. After washing, I ended up with a balanced yarn.
I dyed the roving for the skein using a new method I read about. I filled cupcake tins with different colors of Procion dyes with a little soda ash in each. In this case, I used Brilliant Blue, Peach and Olive.
It was a very small amount of cotton but I wanted to swatch it to see how it knitted up. I decided to swatch it as a little pouch. At least I'd have something to keep for my trouble. There's a little bit of olive alpaca that got into the mix. It is a much larger yarn so it creates a point on the bottom.
And getting a little playful, I tried it as a cat hat.......
And then as as needle "quiver" which actually works the best since I can never keep my doublepointeds together.
The superwash roving in those cheerful reds and oranges that seemed perfect for a child's hat did make there way into a hat but it ended up more an adult hat. The hat is knit in sections as the previous one done in Noro to play up the color variations. The hat has both good and bad elements but I enjoyed the whole process because of the opportunity to see the colors unfold and then see how they juxtaposed when knit up. So I might love how this color and that color are side by side while in some areas I find the effect not to my liking. It was fun.
My friend modeled the hat and I turned it to show the completely different back and front (or sides as well).
And here's the top:
I really love to see different areas of color side by side!
All in all, not a stunning hat but still an adequate result. It's value for me was in the use of technique and the colors unfolding and teaching me what I like and what I don't!
I also used up some of the other superwash I dyed and spun a few weeks ago to make another hat. The colors please me less but it was still a worthwhile effort.
I left the front edge unribbed in order to add a brim but the brim doesn't quite work. It definitely would work on a head with dreads but that wasn't my intention so I'm going to try again.
My approach to designing is hit or miss so I expect setbacks but I do know that even the more professional approach requires a lot of time ripping out and redoing. I really admire handknit designers for their amazing abilities that rarely get fair compensation.
So you see..I've been having fun, exploring technique and color. I feel satified even though I have very few "pretty" things worked up from my yarn.
