The Honey Cowl

It's so nice to knit for myself sometimes.

It's even cooler to get to have a hand in the entire process, like dyeing the yarn!

The yarn pictured above is undyed Ecological Wool, from Cascade. I got to take a natural dye class at the Knit Cafe a few weeks back, and we dyed our yarn using Turmeric (bright yellow), red cabbage (blue/grey), and red onion skins (greeny yellow).

I knew I had enough yarn to make something lovely, I just wasn't sure yet. I checked out Ravelry, and they appear to be completely in love with the Honey Cowl. Why not?

 

I actually really enjoyed knitting this. The pattern was straight forward, the yarn was lovely, and I just had to be a little creative with my colour changes to make it all work together. I love how natural dye colours never seem to really clash with each other!

I couldn't be happier. Just in time for the cold weather too!

Natural Dyeing

It's been a busy, busy couple of weeks and I have a number of projects on the go at the moment.

I've been quite sidetracked by Natural Dyeing though.

I recently took a natural dyeing class at the Knit Cafe (I'll post about that soon!), but before the class started I had the bug. Bad.

I also had some really nice, single ply alpaca yarn my mother gave me.

I decided to mordant this yarn with alum and cream of tarter. Unfortunatly, I listened to the advice I found online and only did a 7% solution with the alum (I should have aimed for 15 - 20%). I simmered the yarn in the mordant solution for about half an hour, and let it cool overnight.

Then I rinsed the yarn out (mistake 2, next time I won't rinse)

Then, I poured my soaking water from a ton of black beans over it, and put it aside for a few days.

Initially, I wasn't impressed.

It looks like worms!

Eventually though, it started to turn blue! After 48 hours, I pulled out the yarn and rinsed it out. Mistake 3: I should have left it longer.

But hey, it did turn blue. So I guess it wasn't a lost cause!