Spinning~Knitting~Dyeing

A few months ago I spun a bobbin of merino wool in a colour-way called ‘Teddy Bear’.  The colours seemed to be really lovely so I plied with a very fine cashmina yarn to keep the colour transitions clear and to avoid the dreaded candy cane effect.

I wanted to get a nice spiral yarn, so I held the cashmina yarn tighter than the merino and I got a really lovely textured yarn as you can see on the niddy-noddy below.

Last week I decided to knit the skein into a short scarf and found a pattern in A Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara Walker on page 220 called Scroll Pattern I have to say it is a truly lovely pattern.

As I was knitting along I discovered that the hand spun wasn't quite working out colour-wise.  Instead of having the lovely smooth transition from colour to colour that I was hoping for I got clearly distinct bands of colour and not in a good way. The pink and brown are great together but every once in a while a random yellow appears all by itself.

Ngaire is holding the scarf taut while I take this photo so you can see the pattern and the colours ~ this is pre wash and just off the needles so it's really sproingy.

One of the amazing things about this pattern is the reverse side ~ for a weaver this basket weave appearance is just a bonus!

Here is the scarf finished but not washed or blocked.  I’m really not happy with the colour transitions and so before I go any further with it I think a quick dunk in a dye bath is in order.  

Well, it's been a few weeks and a few changes....You can see on the photo above of the scarf, that my cast on edge and my cast off edge are really different; one frilled outward and the other curved inward ~ not a good look, so I made it a circular scarf!  And I dyed the scarf; I chose to use a blue dye bath and watered the dye down so it was just a pale wash.  My goal was to even out, but not completely obliterated the colours.

I 'frogged' the cast off edge and put the stitches on a straight needle and then did the same with my cast on edge.  Then I cast off following the pattern taking one stitch from each needle.  I think the join looks very subtle!

Here is the scarf after it was blocked and the curved edges and the pattern really show up nicely.

I'm really please with this scarf now!