Happy Friday!

I went into last night’s dye session with only a few specific ideas in mind that I wanted to try, along with a lot of “what if I do this?” and “let’s try doing that.”  And that is usually how my dye sessions normally are, so nothing new on that score.  I can’t speak for other dyers, but  I have found that when I agonize over what to do or how to do it (at least for my weekly Blog Reader Specials), things rarely turn out as I want, so to save myself the turmoil, I just pull out some yarn, apply some dye, wrap it up, and move on to the next one.  It’s not always perfect, but it is definitely less stressful.  And, of course, I’ve been doing this a while and I’ve learned to trust my instincts most of the time.

This week I dyed up some lovely soft (oh-so-soft!) sock yarn made with 80% Superwash Merino, 10% Cashmere, and 10% Nylon; these are 430 yards in 100 gram skeins (3.5 ounces) so it is a lighter-weight sock yarn than my regular Phydlbitz Sock, but these are still plenty enough for an average pair of socks.  If you are familiar with knitting socks on my Phydlbitz Sock, you might want to knit a gauge swatch before knitting socks with today’s yarns.

Because I’m not likely to get this particular yarn base in the future, I wanted to get as many hanks as I could from the three cones I have.  I was able to get 27 full size hanks, so there are 3 solo skeins along with my regular 12 Twinsets/24 skeins.  I have grouped the solo skeins at the start of each rack so they are easy to spot.  There are some speckles, some splatters, some near-solids and some 3- or 4-color washes.   The washes were done in a manner similar to the baby-soft color washes I’ve done before but this time the colors are more saturated.   The ones that appear to be solid or nearly solid have 2 or 3 dyes applied in layers.

For example #327 started as a light blue wash, but it wasn’t even, so I added a bit of purple, but then that was splotchy so I did a third dip into a red wash.   When viewed up-close it is easy to see the layers involved.   Twinset #343-344 was done toward the end of the evening and I ended up using almost all my leftover dyes, layering one color after another.    Twinset #341-342 started as a pale turquoise, but it just didn’t look right, so I gave it a couple washes with a sort of foggy gray.

Twinsets #332-333 and #338-339 are from the same jar of a color recipe I am still working on using two different blue dyes blended into a single jar before applying to the yarn.  When it’s done right, it is an amazing deep rich blue.    Yarns from these two Twinsets would definitely coordinate well if you wanted to work in alternating stripes, for example.  The more solid pair (#332-333) didn’t come out as even as I had hoped and you can see some lighter/some darker, probably because I used some first for the speckled pair and didn’t leave enough to fully saturate the more solid Twinset.  As I said, it’s a recipe I’m still working on to get it just right.

I expect to have these all ready to ship on or about Wednesday.

MCN Sock will be $28.00 each on the Blog Reader Specials page, but are available at Preview Pricing today and tomorrow for just $26.00 each when you take any two or more from this new collection (BRS23 – #326 – 352).  You do not have to take both skeins of a Twinset; take any two or more that you like.

To claim the ones you want, just send me an email with your numbered requests.  I will send you a PayPal invoice

Edit:  All the yarns not claimed during Preview Pricing have now been posted to the Blog Reader Specials page.

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