Stripes

For October’s Tiger Club, I started with a basic Red, Yellow, and Blue palette, loosely inspired by this picture. I made up a deeply red magenta, a rich almost black navy, and a soft wheat yellow. I also mixed up a deep brown, and although I made the grey color, I ultimately didn’t really need to use it. My plan was to let the yellow and red make the orange, and similarly for the blue and yellow to pull in some green that is in the picture but not the palette.

The fiber is one we haven’t had before, Swaledale, which came in a natural pale grey, which I like for deep colors, it helps get rich colors without having to use an excess of dye. This British fiber is much more on the coarse side, with a micron count ranging from 35 to 45. In the undyed fiber it’s easy to see two type of fiber in here….the bulk of the fiber is the light grey and toward the 35 micron side, but it also has a lot of wiry guard hairs in black and white, and they are definitely on the 45 micron end. The fiber has a longer staple length. I’d suggest perhaps spinning this in a worsted style while smoothing the fibers, bulky, and not a lot of twist….keeping it singles or maybe doing a wrap or ply with something thinner. Think lopi type yarn. This is going to be very sturdy….but scratchy, so choose something lined, or something not on the skin like maybe boot toppers or even a fulled or woven bag.

My plan to let the colors blend and create the in-betweens was somewhat foiled….this fiber was eager to absorb the dye and didn’t let it play too much. You be able to urge more blending out of it depending on your drafting while spinning, or have some fun with blending.

The yarn is Titanium Tiger Twist, a great SW Merino/Nylon blend with a tight two ply hosiery twist. I tried a new dye technique with this one, dyeing 3 at a time in a pan, twisting the yarn to use it as a resist. On the first pass, I heat set in the burgundy, navy, and brown. Then I untwisted the yarn and dip dyed them with a golden brown color. I was not quite satisfied with the variety of blending, so then I further drizzled the skeins with a bright orange, green, and gold. The picture doesn’t quite capture the subtlety and variety of colors. I do hope to see some of these knit up in the wild. I’ll be trying this technique again, but perhaps in more analogous colors.

Tiger Club is still full and on wait list, this is because I buy supplies several months in advance, and they come in minimum unit sets which doesn’t make it easy to just add one or two at a time. I anticipate opening up a block to new subscriptions in January when I’ll be ordering supplies for the first quarter or so. In the meantime, you are welcome to contact me to be put on the waitlist.

While I had a general color theme in mind, along the lines of the vibrancy of the emerging spring, an image search solidified my choice. This is the Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone, and it is stunning with the contrasts of blues and rust and green.

I decided to make this variegated pattern more dappled, so I formulated three shades of brown and rust, two shades of blue, and three shades of green from new sprouts to old pines. Then I applied these randomly within their color area on both the yarn and fiber.

The fiber is Falkland type, always a great wool to use for dyeing. I say ‘type’ for this one, as it isn’t wool from the Falkland Islands, but rather follows their selection process for the product. The wool is American, chosen to be a medium fineness and for whiteness. This is a great all-around wool, happy to be spun worsted or woolen, and turned into whatever you like.

The yarn is Zebra Sock, which is a lot like Tiger Twist in construction except there are random grey and black areas in one of the plies, giving a nice barber pole effect and toning the colors in areas. Here’s a close up of the dappled colors within each section.

I finally got a chance to make a swatch (which is why this post is late….sorry!). I wanted to see how the colors and the marling held up against each other…..is it too busy?

I have to say I’m delighted with how it turned out. I tried two different stitch counts, 72 (seen at the top) and 64, both at the same tension (8-9 stitches per inch). It’s interesting the change 8 stitches can make. I’ll be swatching this more when I’m ready to knit my socks to find the ultimate balance between stitch count, tension, and pattern to encourage the yarn to behave how I like, but still fit well. Which of these two stitch counts do you like better?

I’ve done the office work and picked out a color theme for May and will start dyeing tomorrow. If you are interested in joining the fun, check out the Club page in the shop, then jet me a message using the contact form. With the Summer Crazies coming up, I’m filling the club via wait list only until fall.