Wow! Such Color!

Happy Saturday!

I had a marvelous time playing with color in last night’s dye session.  As always, I only had a vague idea of what I wanted to try this week, but I pulled out some dyes I don’t normally use, including a couple of the new fluorescent/neon type dyes I got recently.

Every Twinset dyed this week is a combination of at least two dyes, but most have three or more.  Twinset #655-656 is the only wet-on-dry splattered technique with sky blue, navy, and a couple other blues.  Putting wet dye on (nearly) dry yarn leaves lots of white space all along the strand.

Normally my sequence is to put all the yarns into a pre-dye soaker solution with a surfactant that helps remove any oils from the yarn-spinning process at the mill.  Oils left on the yarn sometimes act as a resist so that dyes don’t strike well.  Nearly all dyers do some sort of process to remove those oils.  The pre-dye soak also opens up the fibers better.  Then I put the yarn into the spin cycle in the washing machine to remove as much of the pre-dye soak solution; this is the part where the yarn comes out “dry,”  but fluffed up a bit.

Then I re-soak each Twinset individually in a warm bath to re-wet it so that the wet dye is better able to wick along the fibers, whichever technique I use for applying the dye.

Often when I dye I use up little remainders of dyes into what I call DumpDyes — combining all the leftover dye into a single blended color; I do this when there is not enough leftover dye worth saving, but still a little more than I want to just pour out.  It’s a way to create totally one-of-a-kind solids that cannot be repeated.  This week we have two DumpDyes:  Twinset #659-660 is a mix of magenta, fluorescent red, espresso bean, Teddy Bear Brown, and a couple others; Twinset #671-672 is a mix of all the blues that I had used last night.

Many of this week’s collection will knit up into fabulous Fraternal Twin socks; i.e., they will clearly have matching colors, but the colors will not sprinkle or spread exactly the same on each sock.  When using Twinsets for larger-than-socks projects (shawls, scarves, baby blankets, etc.)  it is recommended that you ball up both yarns and then alternate between the balls every two or four rows.

If you need more than two skeins in a coordinated set of matching colors, feel free to request it as a custom dye job.  Likewise, if you need a yarn other than Phydlbitz Sock, I can access most standard yarn bases that I don’t keep in stock.  Just let me know what type of yarn you want, how many, what color(s), and how soon you need it.

All the yarns this week are Phydlbitz Sock (75/25 Superwash Corriedale/Nylon, 430 yards) and were dyed as Twinsets.

Normally, Phydlbitz Sock is sold individually at $27.50, but for Saturday and Sunday (Sep 7-8) you can take any two or more skeins at Preview Pricing for $25.50 each.   For this weekend’s Preview Pricing these can be a matching Twinset or any non-matching skeins.

To claim the ones you want, just send me an email with your selections, I will mark them off the Available Yarns tally chart below.  This helps others see what has already been taken at the time of their visit.

I expect to have this week’s yarns prepared for shipping on or about Wednesday.

Available Yarns: 
Rack 1 – 649, 650, 651, 652, 653, 654, 655, 656, 657, 658, 659, 660
Rack 2 – 661, 662, 663, 664, 665, 666, 667, 668, 669, 670, 671, 672

Picture of hand-dyed yarns drying on a rod.Picture of hand-dyed yarns drying on a rod.

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