Lunamoth

Four skeins of llama/merino/nylon sock-weight, natural colour

Remember these?  They’re the skeins of sock yarn my friend Elisabeth gave me as a thank-you for helping her paint her living room last week.  I was thrilled to receive them (Elisabeth has very nice yarn), and was looking forward to dyeing them, as I had already  made myself a pair of socks in the natural colour and wanted something a little different.

Usually I do hand-painted sock yarns with a variety of colours in one skein, but I decided to go with kettle-dyeing for these.  That gives you single colours, slightly irregularly dyed, which results in a more dynamic end product than evenly-dyed yarn, I think.  I love the slight tonal variations kettle-dyeing can offer.

Because the yarn is a fawn colour, light colours wouldn’t show very well, so I went with some mid-value jewel tones — sapphire, emerald, amethyst and ruby.

After the transformation

The colours are slightly muted because of the fawn undercolour, and very lightly heathered.  I’m quite pleased with how they turned out.  Each skein will make one pair of socks, and I’m keeping them all for me.  They are so wonderfully warm, and I get cold feet in the winter!  I think I’ll use the blue yarn first for my next sock pattern.  I have an idea about some all-over cables that I’m going to try.  Or, since I like how the colours work together, maybe some colourwork socks.  Hmmmm…..

These yarns are actually not “dyed in the wool” — that refers to wool being dyed before it is spun.  Fibre that is dyed in the wool tends to have a more consistent colouring than that which is dyed in the yarn.  Once the weather warms up enough, though, I’ll take my little electric one-burner stove outside with my big stainless pot and dye some fleece for spinning.  That will be dyed in the wool!