It’s be a few hot minutes since I’ve dyed a rainbow, and October was a good month to do it, with the warm rich colors of autumn and thoughts of Thanksgiving emerging. I mixed up a bright berry pink-red, rich pumpkin orange, golden squash, rich greens, evening twilight/blueberry, and burgundy-purple grape.
Our fiber this month is Andean Stricken Combed Top. A special edition, this nice toothy medium wool from the Andes is a blend of white and darker brown fibers. It lends a bit of depth to the colors without being overbearing like stripy/tweedy tops can be. Tiger Fiber Club is all about trying new things, so I decided to dye the color separately so that you can truly be the boss of the fiber. Blend the shades together to make your own gradients or blends, make stripy rolags, or simply chunk it all up and do a random combo spin to make a totally fun marl yarn. I hope you’ll share your process and yarny creation on social, I’m excited to see what you will make!
Our yarn is reliable and soft Journey, a perfect go-to for socks (that actually fit in your shoes), or really any thing you might like to make. Instead of keeping the rainbow in order, I interleaved them, allowing for some new colors at the junctions. The dyeing method is cold pour, and the yarn itself made resists on some skeins. Each skein turned out a bit different, and all are amazing. My skein is the one shown open….I chose that one to keep because it was the most ‘boring’! 😉
I finally had a chance to knit up a swatch, and I love how it has turned out. Interleaving the colors made a much nicer blend and less striping than keeping the rainbow in order.
This is a 72 stitch tube at a good tight stitches per inch, I’d say 8-9. How yours will pattern will depend on the skein itself (to fit in the pan, the yarn was artfully squished, so each batch has a bit of a different ratio of colors), your stitch count, your tension, and your pattern. Experiment with various things until you get something you are satisfied with.
I do have a few spots open in the Tiger Fiber Club, and one Sock spot. We’d love to have you for November’s Club!
