We are currently owned by two tabby sisters, one is a more standard mackeral, the other leans Torbie (and she has the Torbie ‘Tude). While our girls have green eyes, I couldn’t resist this brilliant blue. With a few new dye colors in hand, I took on this picture, subbing the rusty brown color around the nose for the pale tan to provide a great contrast for the blue.
The fiber this month is Cheviot. It’s a great sturdy medium wool that has a non-regular crimp. This keeps it lofty when spun, and resists felting. Perfect for socks or mittens. I went with a back and forth stripe on this, you can break it at the turn-arounds if you want to keep the colors in order….or do whatever you like…remember, you are the boss of your fiber! One thing I wasn’t the boss of….that blue! It’s a nice bright aqua (see the yarn below), but the new dye stuck differently from the old yellow I blended it with, so it split into a seafoam green and an ocean blue. Gotta love happy accidents!
Our yarn is Bengal, which is a great 4 ply sock yarn that is 100% BFL (Blue Faced Leicester) wool. BFL is a much longer fiber than Merino, so it holds up well to being socks without needing to be blended with nylon. It’ll be great for anything you would normally use a sock or fingering weight yarn for. This was a lot of fun to dye, I laid the skeins out and basically painted on the random tabby stripes. So, while the colors are the same across all the batches, and the blue is in the same spot, each skein is going to ‘tabby’ a bit differently.
I was lucky enough to have an extra this month, so I’ve swatched it up here to check my tension (it’s a bit tighter at the bottom, a bit looser at the top…not a huge difference to the patterning, but you can see it in the black especially….not going diagonal at the bottom, making right leaning diagonals just below the middle, then making left leaning diagonals above that, before settling back to no diagonals at the top!) I’m super pleased at how this turned out and I’ll be applying this technique to yarn in the future.
Speaking of yarn, would you like to join the Tiger Sock Club? I’ve opened up a number of new spots and would love to have you join us. I also have one more fiber spot. March Club is open through March 15th.
