Nancy Roberts Knitting To Dye For II

Machine Knitted Blanks and Hand-Knitted  Socks

My followup project for Nancy Roberts' Knitting to Dye For workshop at Convergence in July of 2012 in Long Beach, CA, was sock blanks, which I knitted the first day of her workshop but did not have time to dye in the workshop.  So approximately a week or two following the workshop, I went to my friend Lori Lawson's home to do the dyeing.  She has an entire workroom set up for this for her business, Capistrano Fiber Arts, and allowed me to use her facilities to dye my sock blanks.  My heartfelt thanks to Lori.

I had intended to do an Arizona sunset colorway, purple to orange in three steps, so purple, red, orange, but when the colors dried, I had purple, orange and gold.  Next time I will test the colors, let them dry, and then make my choices, since the colors have a way of changing slightly upon drying.

I dyed these blanks from the purl side, but I should have flipped the blanks over and added dye on the knit side of the fabric.  However, I like the slightly heathered effect I got by not doing that.

Nancy gave the class a sock pattern which called for 8.5 stitches per inch on No. 1 double-pointed needles, but since I knit a bit loosely, I would have had to go down to a No. 0 needle, and the resultant fabric was just too dense, let alone the fact I was having trouble with my fingers going numb while trying to hold such tiny double-pointed needles. So I opted to make my favorite sock pattern from the Socks Socks Socks book, Retro Anklets, elongating the leg a bit.  I actually think I have enough yarn to make another pair.

Next time I try this process of knitting blanks, dyeing them and knitting this particular sock pattern, I will make fewer machine knitted rows on my blanks in between the marker rows - roughly half the number, so that I get shorter stripes on this pattern.  Nancy's pattern called for 72 stitches to cast on, whereas this pattern calls for 60 stitches per row, thereby making deeper stripes.

Nancy is a wonderful teacher, and I learned so much - not about the knitting machine, but about planning a project to dye for and about dyeing with colors of vastly different values.  I think next time around, I will use more gentle graduations between colors.