While the dandelion (Taraxacum) with shimmery water droplets did inspire the fiber, the colors themselves are loosely inspired by the bokeh color background of these little seed heads (cypsela). I decided to intensify the colors to make them a little easier to dye, since I did have a bit of a time crunch with the holidays and being a musician.
For fiber, I selected this really fun humbug (which means only blended one or twice so there are large streaks of the fibers) of Blue Faced Leicester and Firestar, which I dubbed BFL Firebug. It was really fun to see the way the sparkly nylon really sucked up the dye, and the BFL was more subtle. This may require a little extra attention when spinning, the nylon will want to slip out easily giving you bits of pure firestar yarn. With some care in drafting across, you can be sure to grab some wool with the sparkle. And of course you can blend it further, do faux or true rolags, rip up and reorder, or whatever your heart fancies.
Yes, I’m absolutely crazy. I made sock blanks. I couldn’t help it, I wanted this gradient for you. This is a double stranded blank of our classic Journey Sock Yarn. Simply remove that white loop of thicker yarn from the end row of stitches on the purple end and cast on for Two at a Time socks, or knit one and ball the other (handy if you have a way to make a center pull). Because I like complicated, I’m tempted to ball both of mine, halve them, and alternate every two rows, lining up the yellow with the purple, blue with the orange, and green with the pink. You could also alternate with a solid (white, black, navy, grey?) and use the same for toes/heels/cuffs and easily get two pairs of socks from this skein.
If you want to unwind the entire blank, I suggest finding a way to unwind this blank from the side, as that is how it was knit (with one of those circular hat machines). You can load it on your umbrella swift, putting the blue section around the middle, then folding it back and forth over itself until you get to the purple bit (you’ll need to cut that safety loop to be able to stretch it over). You could also try this with a loose lampshade, or even a box mounted on a lazy susan. Get creative, I’m sure you have something you can do to feed this off the side. Then if you have another swift with solid arms, you can put a finger between the two ends of yarn and wind off into two separate skeins. Or just wind off by hand. If you make skeins, be sure you either ball from there, or put in 4 ties before you remove it from swift or box, it’s going to be very boingy from those knitting kinks. You can give your skeins a bath and hang them to dry again to relax this crimp.
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