I really love the colour of indigo dye

I think it's just such a delicious blue, no matter the intensity. I see it as a bit of beautiful luxury item, because it's not so easy to find indigo dyed things. But I was watching Collectors tonight (oh! Such a great TV show!) and a lady specialising in japanese fabrics (she had the sweetest antique pattern books, and handpainted embroidery thread spools) said that indigo was a colour reserved for the working class in Japanese feudal society. Imagine! And she showed off some kimono and helmets with designs based on tattoos. The working class in nineteenth century Japan were really, really heavily tattooed, such that tattoo imagery was influencing fashion! Double imagine!

And should you want some pretty almost-sky coloured yarn of your own, Etsy is a rather good place to look. There's this, or this, or my favourite, this.

A Verb for Keeping Warm

I recently ordered some sock yarn from A Verb for Keeping Warm, and have been dying for it to arrive. Aren't the colourways just stunning? Look at the beautiful grey-blue-mauve and oyster-pink-brown. And mustard and deep rich pink! Yum! The thing about A Verb for Keeping Warm is that Kristine dyes (most) of her yarns with natural plant dyes. That's right. No acid dyes, no jacquard dyes, no Kool-Aid. Isn't that magic? The Indian Summer colourway (pink and mustard) is dyed with madder and cochineal. The Neptune colourway (blue/ grey/ oyster) is logwood using two different mordants, if I recall correctly. Up in her etsy shop right now is a hot pink, mid grey and dark grey yarn that is so punky and bold you would never guess its hippy origins unless you were told.

I love that these colourways, so beautiful and surprisingly vibrant, can be just pulled from nature. And I read somewhere, probably a bit of hyperbole, that 'nothing in nature's palette clashes'. But I think it's true. Mustard and hot pink should not look this good together. Some would argue that natural dyes are better for the environment. Personally, I think the harm caused by the dyes of a small scale dyers is arguable, and some natural dye mordants are pretty toxic. On the subject, Kristine refuses to use chrome mordants (the nastiest kind). But you could tell yourself you're saving the world by buying her yarn if you want. While there's a lot of really lovely handspun in the shop, the sock yarns are commercial yarn. I chose superwash merino, because I like to machine wash sockies. There's also some blue-faced leceister in that lolly-pink and lemon you can see in the corner. It was added into my package as a 'little' sample.

Now to customer service: Shazam! The best I've had on etsy! Kristine worked out international shipping for me, and changed her listings accordingly. She was unsure about listing all of her items as able to be shipped internationally (though I worked on talking her into it), so outside the USA you might want to convo her. She was super-prompt with replying and gave me no indication that it was an unwelcome hassle to relist for international shipping. Plus, upon asking, she divided the skeins for me and wound them into centre-pull balls! This is going above and beyond the call of duty, I think! I asked because a single skein does a pair of socks, but I have no scales to divide the yarn evenly. The skeins are 126g (4 1/2 oz), and a very good price for handdyed yarn.

Postage to Australia was $11 for up to four skeins, and it took a mere 11 days to arrive.

I heavily, heavily encourage you all to buy some of her yarn. While a million people are handdying all kinds of sock yarns, A Verb for Keeping Warm really stand out as something a bit different, using natural dyes. The quality of dyeing and the colours are equal with any regular-dyers' works. She is the only person I've found that does variegated sock yarn in natural colours. Plus she has some awesome-crazy rainbow (and solid, if you lean that way) handspuns that beg to be turned into a scarf.

Where to buy? Currently split between her own website, A Verb for Keeping Warm, and her Etsy shop. And while you're at it, check out her blog for to see her awesome Indian Summer Pomatomuses (I'm going to be a copycat and make some the same I think).

(oh, and the fabric in the background is my new Lara Cameron fabric, in linen blend. It was going to be a Martha Stewart bag for a gift, but I love it too much to give it away).

Dyeing

I've had some cream coloured merino 4-ply to dye for, oo, 10 months now. So I thought in my week off I'd best get on and do it. While I want to dye one ball with onionskins for a contrast toe and heel I don't actually have enough onionskins right now. So it was just a spot of stove-top Kool-Aid action.


Clockwise from the dark powder: black cherry, strawberry, two cherry.


Yarn spaghetti! I had a really rough time trying to make the colour penetrate the fibres. Was this because:
a) the yarn is machine washable; or
b) because I didn't wash it in wool wash first?



After all the dye was soaked up. Can you see how the water is clear now, compared to the really dark water in the above picture? This happened really quite quickly. It was simply a case of heat-till-colour-nearly-gone, feel like it should be more complex so turn off stove, cover pot and walk away for ten minutes, come back to completely clear water.


And here it is in the bathroom to dry. Yes, my tiles are really that colour. Floor and walls. The shower screen is bubbled yellow glass too. Yes, you can pity me. While the dye looks all nice and even in that picture, really, up close it's um... variegated... because of how the yarn didn't want to take the dye. I swooshed it about in the pot a lot, but I guess I missed some spots. So there's a little pale pink in there (no absolute cream, I'm pretty sure).

While this was fun, the real joy was in the simplicity, quickness and general lack of mess that Kool-Aid in a single colour entails. I'm not really cut out to be a hard-core dyer.

When dry, reskeined (oo! I learned how to wind centre-pull balls. Those of you rolling your eyes at the fact I didn't already know how to do this shut up!) these will be snowflake socks. Except toe-up, because that's how I like it.

On onionskins and madder and alum and cutch

Well, not so much on the knitting front. My new needles (to finish my socks) still haven't turned up. I have a lot more babette squares. So many that I'm running out of yarn at an alarming rate. I grabbed some acrylic scraps at mum's last night, but I still need to go buy some more (wool) yarn. The acrylic because, well, hell it was free, and it was a startlingly good match for some hand-dyed yarn I'm running out of. Not quite as hot or pale, but it was two shades of pink and mauve in very short repeats. Not a bad match for a complete coincidence.

I'm also on a big search for naturally dyed yarns. Why? Oh, just because I can. They're not necessarily any less toxic than acid dyes, but I like the muted colours, and the depth, and the relatively limited palette. I think what attracted me was the yellow dyes. I detest yellow in virtually all its forms normally, but in natural dyes the yellows are quite attractive to me.

So far I've found some at NatureSong, and some at FreshIsle Fibers, while a few dyers over at Ravelry have assured me they're working on natural dye batches right now and will list them in the next few weeks.

And I'm dipping my toe (almost literally) in the natural dye caper myself, with onion skin dye. Apparently it isn't particularly lightfast, but it is the only natural dye that uses a common household foodstuff (vinegar) as a mordant. I'm just doing up a single ball to do toes and heels on socks, because I kind of like contrast toes and heels, and I don't want yellow socks. So they won't see a whole lot of light anyway.