Friday, December 4, 2009

Stockings to Dye

Our homeschool kids are going to dye Christmas stockings today. I knit up 18 stockings from 100% wool for them. Quite a stack! I was really happy I was able to get them done. I started knitting them on Wednesday and finished stitching them together on Thursday afternoon while Vet2Be and I watched "Liberty".

Here is what they look like now:


The different colored yarn ties help me remember which yarn I used on which stocking. I'm curious to see how each yarn dyes up. I used some hand-spun yarn from Green Mountain Spinnery (red) that I had left from a few years ago, some Patton's wool (orange), and some Knitpicks Bare Superwash Merino worsted (pink). The Knitpicks yarn was the softest of the three, the Patton's was next, and the hand-spun was the ichiest (just in case you are wondering).

I personally love Knitpicks yarn! I love their service and their prices and the variety of yarns that they offer. I love their interchangeable knitting needles, too.

I'll post some photos after the kids and moms are done dying their stockings to show how they turned out. I think it will be a fun project.

3 comments:

Grandma Elsie said...

What a great idea. You are teaching those kids something that will stay with them all through their lives. It will help them to help them selves as well. Do they all know how to knit as well ? i taught my 2 granddaughters but they have no time for it now, just school and basketball. Sad.

Laurel said...

I'm curious how they take the dye, and what type and set method you use for them. I've been playing around with a bit of patons and food coloring and it didn't come out like when I use acid dyes and handspun. But I just don't have time to do enough handspun anymore.I'm especially curious about the pattons since that's what I've got to dye up right now.

TJ said...

I've used Kool-Ade in the past. It works very well as long as you don't leave the dyed yarn in the sun too long.

I heat set the dye into the wool in the microwave.

Here is a link link to KnitPicks that shows how they do it with sock blanks. Sock blanks are my next project!

http://community.knitpicks.com/notes/Dyeing_-_Sock_Blank