u/Shadow23_Catsrule

Hey everybody!

I just finished this pair in left over bulky weight (?) yarn and I did win yarn chicken 💪😄

Granted, these were knit toe-up, so it's a very soft version of yarn chicken

You can see the marled yarn laying on top, which I was successfully squeezing out the heels. The two stripes on top are another colourway of the same yarn, as I wanted to extend the leg a bit.

Started binding off with what I call "half JSSBO" where I do the yarn over on the purl stitches where it will be less noticeable, but not on the knit stitches. I had about 1.0m to 1.2m left when I started that. After having bound off the first half (I always knit TAAT on ML, that's why there is halves), and noticed that what I had left of the darker yarn for the rest of the BO wouldn't be enough. I wasn't willing to tink back 1.5 rounds, so I switched to just a regular BO for the second half of both socks respectively, and YAY, I made it!

You can see how little was left after finishing the BO, as I still have to weave in the ends. So happy the yarn turned out to be juuuuuust enough 🥳

Vanilla here, of de Viennese kittehs gang.

Frens, maine Meowmy so so dumdum! Herm nawt eebn cin taek pikshur ob da foot fur she maded (an we kittehs did a halp!) wiffoot maine halp! Luk, Ai hadda git inna pikshur ta maek it güd! Arr awl da Meowmys so dumdum?

*sighs* iz saw hard wurk ta luk affta da Meowmy. Ai send proof pikshur ob maine hard wurk. Ai nawt git enuff cawmpawsayshun!!!

Aima gonna soo fer nawt dumdum Meowmy an moar treets!

Cin yoo send pawyer, pwees?

These are just HOTN, not washed yet, only pulled them over the blockers for the picture.

They are for a friend who is moving to her own apartment and has a hard time atm, so they are meant to warm feet and soul.

Facts:

*yarn is DROPS Fiesta (2 skeins, so about 100g total) which I dyed myself. This is dk sock yarn (75/25 blend)

*stitch number is 26 per needle (magic loop TAAT), so 52 total per sock on 2.5mm for inner cuff, heel flap, and toe starting at estimated ball of foot, the rest on 3.0mm

*size is EU 39. I did 60 rounds for the foot (counted from first round of picked up stitches) before starting the toe decreases, which equaled 20cm of foot (stretched a bit).

*knit cuff down (unusual for me, I prefer toe-up, but the fold-over cuff works much better this way), the tab was done "on the fly" using gsr.

*grafted final 12 stitches using the finchley graft as demonstrated by the wonderful Roxanne Richardson.

My cat Vanilla wanted to "help" taking the pictures 😄

Hi there,

I'm new here, but not completely new to yarn dyeing. I only do it on a small scale for myself to knit (and I knit predominantly socks).

Recently, I fell in love with dyeing sock blanks especially, but the resulting yarn always turns out speckled white from the resist where the stitches "sit" on each other. I did observe some difference in the intensity of that though, and now I wonder how I can make the yarn take up more dye/ make the dye strike more slowly so there will be less lighter speckles in the end result.

As examples some blanks I dyed recently:

Pic 1 + 2: I dip-dyed the DRY in a quite large catering container on the stove with a mix of jacquard dye (hot pink and periwinkle) and high amount of water, that already contained citric acid, because it was a leftover dyebath that I didn't want to throw out. The whole amount of liquid was already hot (at simmering temperature)

I was extremely happy with the colour breaking here, but as you see in pic 2, the resist is very visible on the stitches (and in the yarn that I am in the proces of winding atm) i would have loved this nice gradient to have soaked through the full extend of the stitches.

Was my mistake that there was already acid in the dye bath?

Pic 3, 4, and 5:

Another leftover experiment. This time the blank had been soaked in tap water plus 1 table spoon of citric acid, the baths with the leftover dyes were still hot (maybe not AS hot as in the first case), and the dye struck decently quickly. I let the blank in the baths, just tried to minimize the white ares between the containers, until everything had cooled off. The baths had cleared completely. I liked it, but found the pastel tone a tiny bit boring so I dipped my finger in the dye powder and "stamped" some dye directly on the blank, and put it in the microwave afterwards to heat set everything (which worked out beautifully, no bleeding in the wash)

I KNEW this would result in mere speckling, because i was aware that the dry powder wouldn't penetrate the yarn, much less the knit fabric completely. Pic 5 just shows how this one knit up.

Pic 6 shows a blank I dyed with different dyes (Schimek Batik dyes, German/Austrian brand). I had used this brand for quite some time before I decided to invest in the jacquard dye powder. The main issue I have with the Schimek Batik dyes is that they come in large tablets and either they break before delivery or I have to grind them up and it's a messy process. In all other aspects though, they work great and are also very washfast.

But again, in the finished socks, you can see how much the yarn turned out to have white bits all over. My initial goal was to dye a striped gradient with smaller white stripes in between.