Dyeing to start

This week we reviewed a PHENOMENAL book on the podcast- it's Coastal Knits by Alana Dakos and Hannah Fettig. They're both brilliant, and this book is - as the kids say - 100% full of win. It took real restraint for me to actually sit and record with Mom instead of just go stashdiving and start half a dozen new sweaters.

Seriously. I love all the sweaters in this book. Instead of pulling yarn for all the sweaters, I decided to start with ONE (restraint! Self-control!)- the Rocky Coast Cardigan:

Picture shamelessly stolen from Alana's blog.

There are so many things I love about this sweater- mostly that it's an open-front, drapey cardigan that I can wear regardless of how big the bump gets. It will also look great once I've lost all the baby weight and have a six-pack. (A woman can dream!)

One of the (many) great parts of Coastal Knits is that they suggest alternative yarns for each sweater. And for the Rocky Coast cardigan, Malabrigo is a suggested substitute.

I have a robust stash. I could have *sworn* that I had a bag of navy blue Malabrigo in my stash- and I'm rarely wrong about what yarn I do - or don't - have. I checked the stash, and there were other colors, just no navy blue Malabrigo. Boo. (Any bets on the navy blue turning up when I'm 90% done with this sweater?)

I went and fished the poison green (which they call "Apple Green") out of my stash, and to my utter shock and delight, this cardigan calls for *ONLY* four skeins of Malabrigo. I had four skeins, five if you counted the skein that was in a Hugo-in-Progress.

I swatched, because I've never knit Malabrigo at 4 stitches per inch- in CABLES!

Ever-so-gently blocked. Houston, we have gauge!

In the spirit of "making it work" a la Project Runway (CAUTION: noisy site), which we're FINALLY current on, guess who has two thumbs and still had 4 (or 5, if you count the one skein in my half-knit Hugo monster) skeins of poison green Malabrigo leftover from her Twist cardigan, and a dyepot? This gal.

I have faith in Hannah Fettig, but when it comes to custom colors, an extra skein is always better than trying to match it at the end. So, I ripped out my half-knit monster and told Hugo, "Sorry, this is for the good of the sweater."

I threw all five (neatly tied) skeins in some soapy water to soak, and waited.

I had to wait for Andrew to get home, because my dyeing stuff is all neatly tucked away behind some of the baby stuff we've got- but completely inaccessible to my short and round-in-front self. While he was not thrilled that I was cooking wool (instead of, you know, food), he knows better than to put a dampener on my enthusiasm. Smart man.

(He also made dinner while I was cooking wool.)

I used Mother MacKenzie's miracle dyes, because *somehow* I am completely out of any and all blue Jacquard dyes. I have enough red to dye the Nile, but blue? Nuthin'.

Just blue in the dye bath yielded these results:

Dye bath #1

Not dark enough. Not navy blue, not hunter green, not a nice teal. I decided to let the pot cool overnight, and overdye it the next day.

I got up early yesterday morning and fired up a pot of the Mother MacKenzie's worker blue and a good dose of black. Today? We have a beautiful, albeit damp, hunter green.

Now if only it would hurry up and dry so that I can cast on. Dyeing is not for the impatient.

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