Jobo Designs

I gave in to all the Hype.  I couldn't help myself...

I mean hey, if Jared Flood was doing it... it must be okay right?  

I bought 2 balls of Noro, and set off to work on a striped rainbow scarf.  I had seen many many many of these on Ravelry over the last year, in just about every colour combination under the sun.  I figured it was time I jumped on the bandwagon and tried one out.  My plan is to make a couple of these out of Noro Silk Garden to give away as Holiday Gifts for the 2010 Season, so at this point - one down, and one to go :)

I had never worked with Noro yarn before for several reasons...

First - my hometown doesn't really have a Local Yarn Store other than Zellers and Walmart.  Mostly all those places carry is boring acrylic, and a few acrylic blends.  Very restrictive supplies means that a lot of knitters around here are not really exposed to real wool, luxury wool, or new wild and wonderful things that exist out there.  Myself, I have been a knitter for almost 20 years, and up until a few years ago, had only ever worked with acrylic stuff (i.e. Bernat, Red Heart, Canadiana, etc.)  I always thought that "wool" was an itchy and unpleasant thing to work with.  Especially since the only wools I had been exposed to were the chunky mill-spun 100 % Wool yarns my mother used for Rug Hooking.  (Beautiful colours that made beautiful rugs, but no way did I want that rubbing on my skin!  rough and itchy!)

Second - Price.  I remember seeing this at a yarn store on a road trip and thinking... Holy cow!  that stuff is beautiful, but 15 bucks a skein?  whaaa?  I managed to find an online sale one day when I was searching for Berroco patterns, and since shipping was free that week and Noro Silk garden was on for 8 dollars a skein (Canadian of course) I decided to order 4 balls of a couple different colourways and see how things turned out.  Nothing to lose right?

*****

So the envelope arrived, and I was off to the races.  Having never worked with this yarn, the first thing that struck me was the depth of colour.  The skeins I was working with were long runs of Navy, Midnight, Teal, Evergreen, Lime, Olive, Black and Grey - so obviously fun to work with. 

   

Switching back and forth between the two skeins was exciting, and even though it was a basic K1P1 ribbing (with slipped stitches on the first and last stitch of the purl row to prevent curling up on the edges) I was able to keep amused the whole way along.  It was interesting enough to keep my attention, but simple enough to work on whilst chatting on the phone or watching television.

 

I cast on 39 stitches (a bit narrower than Jared Flood's Prototype - Brooklyn Tweed is a weekly read for me!  Total Yarn RockStar!) but I only had 2 skeins per scarf, and wanted to make sure it was long enough to be worn wrapped around the neck a few times or to look good worn dangling about the neck of a Black felt coat worn unbuttoned (as I think one of the recipients will likely wear it this way)  If I was going to make one for myself, would likely have made the scarf wider and shorter in length because I am less than 5 feet tall, and this one would have been too long for me if I didn't wrap it multiple times around me.

   

I found that the yarn was fairly soft, but pretty stiff/wiry overall.  I was afraid that the Mohair Content would make it feel scratchy, but it didn't seem to.  Once I had completed a few rows, the finished work seemed to feel less wiry over time.  There were some sections that were thin/thick compared to the average diameter of the overall skein.  It didn't really matter much with the specific project I had chosen, but I can see how that might have been really annoying if it was some kind of garment where gauge mattered.  In fact, some of the thick strand sections were the brightest parts of the skein... so the fact that they were big only made the vibrant colours that much more fun.  (ooh, a little bit of that lime green was nice, a LOT is NICER!)

 

I will be interested to see how it feels after some gentle soaking and blocking, as some other knitters have said that this blend softens with handling, and loosens up a bit after blocking.

*****

Final Verdict on Noro Silk Garden:

- so-so feel, a little stiff and not as soft as originally hoped, but definetly not scratcht
- loved the colours - especially the effect of the long flowing colour gradations
- thick/thinness might have been a problem, if gauge were integral
- intriguing enough that I really want to try the other products in the Noro Line... maybe sock yarn next?

** please note my pathetic blocking equipment!  a striped towel on the spare bed and yellow plastic headed quilting pins (stainless steel, so they wont rust against wet wool) **


** Check that rainbow of Noro Color! **

ta taa for now :)

After waiting days (yes seriously, it takes wool that long to dry out!) I finally got to play with the rest of my experimental onion wool. 

I found when I was rinsing the wool, I found that quite a bit of my colouring had come out... I don't think I had heated the dye bath enough for all of the dye to become adhered and colourfast.  Next time I will spend more time making sure things have been heated thoroughly.  This time I was worried about felting the wool, but next time I won't be so fussy.

Here is the resulting braid... the colour is a peachy gold colour.  Think the colour of hardwood floor... aka it matches mine perfecrtly!  the same light golds, and darker golds of wood grain.

During the dying process I had tried to leave some areas light and make some darker, just so the finished yarn would have some more variation and depth.  Here are some more gratuitous drafted top pictures.

 

And then... the fun part - the Spinning.  I started out wanting to make something sock weight, or fingering weight, but realized that I didn't really have enough top prepared to make anything substantial.  So I decided to make a basic two ply, which ended up at around light fingering to fingering weight.  Maybe I'll knit a scarf or something out of it.  This is the nicest merino top I have come across, so it is a real dream to spin... good thing I have about 10 lbs of it left upstairs in my studio... lol

It was fun to see the varied shades of peach and gold fly by in long stretches



I wound the singles into a centre pull ball and left them to sit for a few hours, to let the twist mellow out of course.



Then plied from the inside and outside of the ball to get a thin 2-ply... here it is on the niddy noddy



and finally... finished skein!  ta-daa!

 

Hi Ho... This is Kermit theeee Frog Here...

Um, oops, I mean, Newsflash! Tonight I decided that it was officially time to try out this natural wool dyeing thing. I have been reading about it for a while, and a few weekends ago, in a moment of wool-weakness, I purchased about 10 lbs of a delightful combed Merino Top... so here we go! From the online reading I've done, it seems that one of the simplest and most straightforward dyes that one can find in ones kitchen is Onion Skin. Depending on the minerals present in the water, and what mordants are used, Onion skin can create dyes that vary from olive greens, to deeper oranges and browns. At home we cook with onions very regularly, in fact I use an onion for most meals... so I started saving the skins some time back. The end result of my onion addiction - about 2 8 ounce jars of chopped onion skins, yellow and red onions in the mix.

From what I have learned so far, it takes a large quantity of natural material to make enough dye to really colour anything.  One reference said you need 50g of onion skin to dye about 100 g of wool.  I'm not sure if I had quite that much, but it felt like a lot.  One of these days I will manage to buy one of those kitchen scales, and then maybe i can be more exact with my measurements.  For the wool, I just held up the roving against another 3.5 oz roving I had in my stash. (Not very scientific at all! I know...)

After chopping up the skins into tiny pieces (yay scissors)  I added them to a pot of boiling water and simmered on the stove over low heat for about 1 hour, then left it to steep for about 30 minutes.  This is the colour that came out:

The resulting colour kind of reminds me of orange kool-aid, though it came out more like a pumpkin orange on the wool itself.  I was really surprised, since I thought I would end up with more of a yellowish beige colour, more like the yellow onions themselves.

At this point, I let the dye cool down a bit.  My wool had been soaking in hot tap water (which in our house is quite warm, but not quite boiling)  and when the dye had gotten cool enough to stop steaming, I poured it into the bottom of a glass/pyrex 9 x 13 inch pan.  Then I carefully added the pre-soaked (in water and white vinegar) wool and swirled the pan a little to allow the dye to mix with the wool.

Using a microwave method, I loosely placed some plastic wrap over the top of the pan, allowing some space for vents.  Then I nuked the whole thing for 2 mintues, then rested on the countertop for 2 minutes.  I repeated this for a total of 6 minutes nuking, and 6 minutes resting, then I let the whole thing return to room temperature, and rinsed the wool.  After the Rinsing, some of the colour seemed to leach, leaving a peachy orange on the natural wool.  I would imagine that if the wool was pure white, the end result would have been very peach, and less orange.

I saved a small sample of the dye so I could try an experiment in "exhaust" dying over the weekend.  The whole principle of exhaust dying is that if you place fiber in the dye and then remove it before the entire amount of dye has been absorbed into the fiber, then there is a portion left... and you can dye a second fiber, and so on until the amount of dye in the liquid is completely used up.  The resulting dyes should have gradually lightening colours.  We shall see anyways.

Pictures of rinsed and dried wool to come later in the week... along with maybe some spun pictures too?  time will tell...  stay tuned!

Part 2