Postcards for Summer #2

A finished Lizard ridge Kitchen Towel in Blue, black, and Magenta

I’ve fallen out of the habit of taking progress pics of my knitting, but a nice finished object pic is hard to resist. One of the tie-dyed skeins of cotton turned into the Lizard Ridge dishcloth (Ravelry Link) by Laura Aylor. This pattern is one of my favorites because of the wonderful shaping and how it makes colors twist and turn. Plus, short rows are just fun to knit.

It has been so long since I’ve knit a new kitchen towel. So long since I’ve cast on for anything! Knitting those first few stitches of garter flipped an instant happiness switch in my brain. This project was worth it just for that bit of joy.

Postcards From Summer #1

2 skeins of cotton yarn and a sock blank - all dyed with the same Colors

Putting a #1 in the title might be a bit much, but I finally had the opportunity and energy to write. Feels nice to scratch that itch after so long. I’m hoping to make these postcards a short and sweet little series about random summertime crafty goodness just because it’s fun. Now, about the yarn…

Kiddo and I started summer with an afternoon of tie-dye! I prepped 2 skeins of cotton yarn and a sock blank along with a mess of shirts, bandanas, socks, and totes. The yarn got the leftover dye which turned out to be a lot of pink, a little dark blue, a smidge of purple, and some black. The muted, washed-out tones make my goth heart happy.

Both of the cotton skeins are destined become kitchen towels to replace some much used and falling apart towels I made 15 years (!) ago. As for the sock blank, I’ll knit that into a pair of default vanilla socks. If only I could figure out how I want to work with the double-strand blank. Pull it out and wind it into 2 separate balls? Knit one sock straight from the blank and wind the other strand? Decisions, decisions.

FO: DRK Everyday Cowl

How I like to wear my DRK Everyday Cowl - paired with a lightweight jacket and a tee.

Taking a break from the inconsistent gauge issues of my Low-Key Halloween socks proved to be a good decision. The DRK Everyday Cowl was calling my name and not having to worry so much about gauge sounded nice. The hard part was actually finding enough DK weight yarn in my stash. Yarn Fort did come through though with 2 skeins of Araucania Copiapo which is a blend of cotton, rayon, and linen. I picked up the yarn a few years ago with the aim of making a lightweight shawl to block the sun and wind on warmer days. That shawl pattern never materialized, but this cowl should do the job just fine.

My grey and white DRK Everyday Cowl looking good in the afternoon sun.

It’s a good thing that the DRK Everyday Cowl is an easy pattern to modify once you understand what each section does. My gauge was a little different than recommended, but I had 410 yds to play with so I wasn’t too worried about running out. I was still 6” short of a the adult large size when I had finished knitting the recommended number of repeats. So, I kept repeating section 2 until I had enough length across the top edge. Section 3 saw me decreasing from 130 stitches which is just a smidge more than the pattern. I will admit that I was nervous that I’d have to dig through Yarn Fort with some matching yarn for the i-cord bind off during the last few rows. Thankfully, I had a few yards left over at the very end. Phew!

I finished the cowl just in time with the wishy-washy days of Spring. Then I wore it for the first time on a warm day sandwiched between two other days of snow and rain. It cut the wind and sun just like I’d hoped, and looks really good paired with my favorite coats. The cowl did grow a little bit during blocking so it’s 28” around the top instead of the 25” I was aiming for. Pretty happy with that change though. I’m not so happy that I spilled coffee on it the very first time I wore it, but you can’t even tell thanks to the neutral colors. I’m pretty happy about that t00.

A closeup of the i-cord edge and bind off on the DRK Everyday Cowl.

The Specs:

The Pattern: DRK Everyday Cowl by Andrea Mowry

Yarn: 405 yds Araucania Copiapo - Vanilla Sky

Needles: US 6 (4mm) circular needles

Dates: March 26 - April 20, 2023

Adventures In Tie-Dyeing Yarn

A bare ball of cotton yarn sitting next to bottles of dye on a plastic work surface.

I’ve been slowly scribbling out a Summer Bucket List for the past few weeks. There’s a few of the usual things - making popsicles, going to the pool, having a picnic at the park - and tackling some tie-dye. The kiddo was all in when I suggested the idea, and helped pick out a few things cover in bright neons. There were bags, shirts, a dress, and yarn of course. I dug through the stash and pulled two balls of dishcloth cotton and the last few grams of cotton from a giant cone. Spoiler alert: I could have pulled out an extra ball or two.

I kept the yarn prep pretty minimal. I skeined the yarn from the cone and kept the balls as they were. My only attempt to keep the balls from tangling was to put a rubber band around the middle. Then everything got a soak in some warm water and Eucalan to wash off the leftover oils from the spinning process. That soak probably lasted about 45 minutes because I got distracted. So all the yarn was good and damp when I got to work on it.

Next came the fun part: dyeing! I used a Tulip One Step Tie-Dye Kit in Ultimate. I saved the yarn for last so I could use up any leftover dye.

A skein of cotton yarn dyed with blue, pink, and purple.

I swirled up the skein into a loose spiral before drizzling the dye over the top. Pink in the middle with purple and blue on opposite sides. Coiling it up ended up creating a lot of short sections of color which will look super cool in a washcloth.

A ball of cotton yarn dyed with green, blue, purple, and pink sitting next to a teal paper towel soaked with extra dye.

Another ball of cotton dyed with blue, green, pink, and purple.

The other two balls I drenched in dye. One half of a ball got a big chunk of color while the other half got smaller sections of different colors. I tried to get as much dye as I could in the center of the balls. Probably over did it with one because dye started pouring out when I picked up the ball. At least it was a pretty color. When I was done, each bundle of yarn went into its own bag.

A third ball of cotton dyed with blue, green, and yellow dyes that were several days old.

There was still a little bit of dye left, but I was out of yarn. I made a second trip to the stash a day or two later and prepped one more ball of cotton the same as the others. This ball did not get as thoroughly saturated with dye as the other balls, and I’m really curious to see how it turns out.

Washing the excess dye from the ball in the sink.

After the dye sat for about 24 hours - way more than the recommended 8 - I rinsed out as much of the excess dye as I could under cold water. The water was still running purple, blue, pink, and green after rinsing and and lots of squishing. So they got two baths with Eucualan. The first cold and the second hot.

The first soak with all the dyed yarn turned the cold water purple.

The water in this first cold bath was purple. And the bottom ball of yarn was just barely holding together. The second bath, and the third, were blue. Washing the third ball did exactly the same thing. In all the videos I watched about tie-dyeing yarn, no one mentioned how long or how hard it would be to rinse out the excess dye, especially when working with a yarn cake/ball. The general advice was rinse and skein the yarn to dry. That’s it. So, I had to experiment a bit to find something that worked.

Step 1: Drying the yarn. I so did not want to put a bunch of wet, dye-bleeding yarn on my swift. Thankfully, there was another option. I have a rack for the inside of my dryer that lets me dry stuff flat without tumbling it around. So, the yarn, even balls that were falling apart, went on the rack in the dryer. They didn’t get perfectly dry, but dry enough to not stain my wood swift when I wound them into skeins.

Step 2: Winding skeins. The only bit of yarn I dyed in a skein, was the only bit of yarn that wasn’t constantly bleeding more dye after multiple rinses. So, all the balls of yarn are getting turned into skeins of yarn.

The outer strands (top) and inner strands (bottom) of one of the dyed yarn balls.

This was my first chance to see how the inside of the yarn balls took up the dye! The outer most strands are on top with the inner strands on the bottom. As expected, the yarn from the outside of the ball has a deeper, more saturated color. The inner strands are more pastel, and remind me of a tie-dyed Easter egg. I’m not sure if this difference is because less dye reached the center or because the pre-soak wasn’t able to wash out as much of the spinning oils. Maybe a little of both? This gradient effect occurred across all three of the balls I dyed, no matter how much dye I used.

Step 3: One more rinse with the right soap. When I realized that just rinsing it with my usual soap wasn’t going to cut it, I ordered a bottle of Synthrapol, a special soap that catches any excess dye from yarn/fabric and suspends it in the rinse water.

By the time I got to washing and rinsing the yarn with Synthrapol a week later, I was wondering if I was being a little too cautious. Maybe the regular soap had washed the dye out already. Turns out, the extra steps were totally necessary. This is what the water looked like after soaking the yarn for 40 minutes in hot water.

All dyed yarn in a hot water rinse with Synthrapol. The water turned slightly blue.

This time, the water ran clear during a rinse with cold water.

Step 4: Hang it up to dry. Since I wasn’t worried about the yarn staining everything around it blue and purple, it went on drying rack. I rolled the yarn up in a towel and stomped on it a few times to squish out as much water was possible first, but that was all the special treatment it got this time around.

All four dyed yarns washed, dried, and put up in hanks.

The finished yarn looks like it’ll be fun to work with. The colors aren’t as eye-searingly bright and saturated as they looked before washing and rinsing which I’m actually really happy with. The muted (by comparison) tones are much more my jam. I’m also curious to see how well the color holds up after multiple trips through the wash.

Now that there are 4 finished skeins in front of me, would I use a tie-dye kit to dye yarn again? Yeah. I even have a second kit in a darker color palette when I’m ready to give it a go.

Will I dye yarn again in balls? Probably not. The yarn dyed as a skein was way easier to wash and finish than the yarn balls. The skeined yarn also had a more consistent color. I had hoped for a more even color through the whole ball - just with more blank spots in the middle - which was not what happened. The ombré effect is cool, sure, but not enough of a reason for me to go through the extra steps and hassle.

The other thing I would do differently next time is prep more yarn, even if there were a few skeins that didn’t get dyed. The yarn dyed with fresh dye has a deeper color than the yarn I dyed two days later at the end of the dyes’ life span. I’d also wash the yarn with Synthrapol from the first rinse and save a lot of time and water.

Dyeing yarn with a tie-dye kit was a fun experiment. It’s been a long time since I’ve dyed yarn, and it was nice to scratch that itch after so many years. Now I’m excited to knit all this up and make some cool new kitchen towels and washcloths.

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The Perfect Face Washcloth

There are plenty ofthings I should have been doing yesterday: cleaning, designing, making phone calls, etc. Instead of doing any of those things, I cast on for something fun, the Mini Almost Lost Washcloth. The pattern popped up in my Pinterest feed and was too cute too resist. I’ve been on the hunt for a good face washcloth for a while and this seemed to fit the bill.  Plus, it was small so that meant it would go fast, right? 

I pulled out my leftover balls of cotton & my favorite washcloth needles, picked out a color, and cast on. This pattern is the definition of potato chip knitting. Each of the wedges goes so fast that I have to knit the next one, and next one, and the next one. Even better, one wedge uses up exactly one color repeat which makes this knitter very happy. You’d think I’d planned this, but it just a happy accident and a perfect use for my last bit of discontinued Dishie Multi.  

I ended up making a few mods as I went. One, I used the long tail cast-on which I won’t do again because it puts the tail in the wrong place to cinch up the center. Two, instead of binding off and sewing the ends together, I picked up stitches from the cast-on and closed it up with the three needle bind-off. The bind off took the place of the last knit row which made the join almost invisible. 

All said and done I used about 15 yds (about 8g) of yarn and the finished cloth is about 4.25” from point to point. It hasn’t gone through the wash yet though. I ended up getting exactly what I wanted in a face scrub: quick to knit, scrubby texture, and just the right size. I’m going to be making a whole stack of these…after I finish my to-do list. 

Pattern: The Mini Almost Lost Washcloth by Sandy Tieman

Yarn: 15 yds (8g) Knit Picks Dishie Multi - Nettle

Needles: US 6 (4.0mm)

Date: June 6, 2016

@Ravelry 

The Tradition Continues

It’s been a long week since my last post. I spent my last few days in LA packing, cleaning, and putting stuff on a truck. Then The Bearded One and I spent too many hours in a car and slept way too little. Once we were in San Francisco, everything happened in reverse. Take stuff off the truck. Clean. Unpack. Now that the internet is swiftly flowing, the apartment is officially home base and I can once again talk to all of you lovely people out there. 

Now that the bulk of the work is done, I have some room in my head for knitting. I hadn’t picked up the needles in a week and none of my current WIP’s were calling. Needed something I could cast on and bind off a couple of days later. Gladly, I’ve already unpacked the yarn stash so I had a few balls of cotton to choose from and my favorite washcloth needles. Then the Ravelry queue came to the rescue with a washcloth/kitchen towel pattern. 

Seems like I’ve made washcloths and kitchen towels since I first learned to knit. They’re small, quick, and relatively cheap. Without meaning too, I knit a new one every time I moved whether it was a new dorm room, apartment, or house for the past 9 years. Making that towel, or 3, makes that new place more welcoming. Sounds like a tradition to me. Yesterday, I cast on for the All Washed Up cloth and the apartment already feels more like home. 

Knit and Be Proud

​One reason I love knitting is because of all the different things I can make. The other big reason is how easily it fits into the rest of my life. I don’t need to sit at home to knit. I can go out with my knitting and not be stuck in front of a computer. I can run errands with yarn and needles in my bag to keep busy and not waste time standing in line. For the last few years, my favorite bit of purse knitting has been socks but I’ve also hauled along hats, fingerless mitts, and even a shawl or two. I carried around the Hitchhiker Shawl until I had to wrap it around my arms so it wouldn’t trail along behind me. Before I learned to make socks and developed a love for shawls, I carried along washcloths to keep my hands busy. I clearly remember knitting a washcloth in a doctor’s waiting room. While the lady sitting across from me thought my knitting was pretty great, I was just a little embarrassed. Not because I was seen knitting in public by stranger but because I was embarrassed to be seen knitting a washcloth. 

At the time, hand knitted washcloths were all the rage. However, for as many people I saw extolling the virtues and wonders of knitting your own washcloths, there were just as many people typing their distaste. One person wrote they would rather pull out their own hair rather than knit a washcloth. Another commenter stated that they would flat out refuse knitted washcloths given to them as gifts. It was comments and thoughts like this that were swirling around in my head as I was sitting in the doctor’s waiting room stitching away. You either had to love knitting washcloths or hate them. There was no in between. I was afraid that some knitter - one that unapologetically hated knitted washcloths - would see me and sneer. So I slunk down in my chair, kept knitting, and hoped that the imagined sneering knitter would not appear. The thought that some knitter who loved making washcloths might appear did not occur to me.

I couldn’t help feeling that way even though I knew it was silly and completely illogical. Several years later, I’m certain that it’s silly and illogical. Just because someone on the internet or in real life says they don’t like knitting washcloths or lacy socks or giant blankets or funny hats doesn’t mean you have to feel like a smuck for enjoying those things. If you want to knit a stack of washcloths 10’ high or a hat that looks like a cooked turkey, go for it. Enjoy it. Have fun. Own it. Just knit what you like. Knit what makes you happy. You don’t have to sneak away and rent a hotel room to get your fix for knitting washcloths or full-length beaded opera gloves. 

Over the years, I’ve since come to terms with my love of knitted washcloths. They’re small, colorful, generally easy, and entirely functional. I like them for scrubbing my dishes and scrubbing my back. If you’re wondering, I do have separate kitchen cloths and bath cloths. Don’t worry. My kitchen has a special drawer filled just with knitted kitchen towels and a few crocheted clothes from a friend. I have an unapologetic stash of kitchen cotton. What’s more, I’ve released six washcloth/kitchen towel patterns and have a few more in mind. The Triforce Washcloth and Bridges Kitchen Towel are the most popular but my favorite is Cthulu Rising. I have no intention of not knitting washcloths because they’re awesome and I enjoy it. Socks are my default purse knitting of choice now but I’m not afraid of sneers or derision, real or imagined, for knitting washcloths or anything else. I say, knit what you love and be proud of it.