The Dyeing Process

The Dangers of Luna Laceweight

By Stephanie

So, let’s say I was holding out a skein of yarn to you — beautiful, light, airy yarn, with a slight halo that made the softness just call out to you.   And let’s say that, as I held it out to you, I said, almost in a whisper, “It’s laceweight, a two-ply of silk and merino…”  As you reached out to touch it, what would be the first thoughts that came into your mind?  Would you be thinking strength?  Would you be thinking red-hot?  How about razor sharp?  No?  Those words wouldn’t be what popped into your mind?  Huh.  Me neither.

I’ve been dyeing the new laceweight yarn that will be going in the shop this week.  It’s called Luna and it’s everything that laceweight ought to be: delicate, soft, luxurious, stunningly beautiful.  With 20% silk blended into 80% superfine merino, it feels divine against the skin — the kind of yarn you just can’t stop touching.  Oh, and it takes colour like a dream.

So far, so good.

It was when I was reskeining the dyed yarn that everything changed.  I was turning the skein winder with my right hand and gently guiding the yarn with my left…  I had the skein winder going at a good clip because, at 1300 yards per skein, it makes for very tired arms if it goes too slowly.  So, we’re going along at a good pace, this yarn and me, when I realised my left hand is starting to hurt…  The space between my thumb and my index finger is really starting to burn.  So I moved my hand and rolled the yarn up my finger a bit and…  moments later, that spot is red-hot too.  This yarn is just so thin and going at such a pace that it was actually cutting into my skin!

So I looked about for something to hold it with — an oven glove would be ideal — and spotted a plastic coat hanger  which will do the trick nicely.  Arranging the yarn so it was running through the hook, I could guide it onto the skein winder by moving the coat hanger back and forth.  And it worked perfectly  …for a time.

After a little while, I realised that there wass a little ball of fluff forming on the hook of the coat hanger.  Thinking that there might be a rough spot taking some of the halo off the yarn, I stopped the skein winder and took a closer look.  And that’s when I discovered this…

That’s right.  You are seeing what you think you are seeing.  In a matter of minutes, my lovely, light, airy, and stunningly beautiful  laceweight yarn was actually slicing through a coat hanger.  You could have knocked me over with a feather!

And I’m so pleased I’d not carried on guiding it with my bare hand…

So, there you have it.  SpaceCadet Creations’s new Luna Laceweight yarn: delicate, soft, luxurious and saturated with colour.  Just as you’d expect.

…And also, apparently, red-hot and razor sharp.  Not as you’d expect at all.

Dyes Mixed by Hand, From Primaries

By Stephanie

Tucked away in the description of my yarns, right down there in the last paragraph, are these words: “Each item is individually hand-dyed by the SpaceCadet, using professional grade acid dyes which are mixed by hand from primaries”.  That last bit is really important to me — mixed by hand from primaries.  Every colour you see in my yarns and fiber has been created by hand, conjured up from only the primaries and black.  It’s both the entire reason that making hand-dyed yarns excites me so much and the source of more than a little pride for me.

I see a colour in my mind (or, more usually, several colours together) that I know I want to dye and I start dissecting them.  If it’s a purple, is it a red purple or a blue purple?  If it’s a darker shade, I gauge how much black is needed to darken it.  If it’s lighter, I work out the dye-to-water ratio it requires.  And then I calculate in the personality of the fiber — every fiber takes dye in its own unique way, so the same colours can come out wildly different.  And taking all that together, I mix up the dyes in the way that I think is going to create the colour I see in my mind, submerge the yarn, and… wait.

And the moment that I pull the yarn out again, and see whether my calculations — and my instinct — were correct, that is the most exciting moment in the whole dyeing process.  When I get it right,  I go a little wild, grabbing friends, family, any passers-by and saying, “Look! Look! this is the colour I was going for and this is what I got!”

Thinking abou this the other day, I wondered if all this excitement wasn’t really a bit ridiculous…?  I mean, really, it’s just colour.  Painters do it all the time, don’t they?  And they not only mix their own colours but then go on to create something with them.  They don’t just sit there crowing over all the little puddles of colours they’ve created on their palettes!

But then I realised that, unlike painters, when I mix my dyes, I’m doing it blind.  The colours in the water are sometimes a good indication, but often not.  And besides, the insides of the dyepots aren’t white so what I see in them is always distorted anyway.  No, there’s no way to know if the colour is right until the yarn goes into the water.  Dyeing is a one-shot deal.

So when I pull the yarn or fiber out of the dyepot and it’s exactly the colour I had envisioned, it’s pretty darned exciting.  For this yarn, I imagined cornflowers, that lovely soft violet-blue that seems to be everywhere this time of year.

Merino and Silk Laceweight Yarn in Cornflowers

When I lifted the yarn out of the dyebath, I knew I’d nailed the colour.  And, yeah, I am really proud to be able to say I mixed these colours by hand from primaries.

Scenes from a Fiber Life: Skeining Off

By Stephanie

Sometimes when the undyed yarns arrive, they are already in skeins and sometimes they are on cones.  When it’s the latter, they have to be “skeined off” before they can be dyed.

Each skein is wound off individually onto an antique skein winder, and weighed as it goes along.  Then it’s twisted up into that familiar shape, dropped into the basket, and the next skein begins.

The skein winder goes incredibly fast for being such an old girl, and creates a nice breeze, but there’s no doubting that skeining off is hard work, and tiring if there is a lot of yarn to be wound.  But it certainly is lovely to look at.

But then, when isn’t fiber-stuff lovely to look at?

This post is in honour of the fact that a huge delivery of undyed yarn arrived on my doorstep today, beautiful and smooshy and ripe with colour possibilities.  Look for it to start appearing in the SpaceCadet Creations shop very soon!

Dyeing Disasters and Silver Linings

By Stephanie

When I’m dyeing, I always go into my studio with a fixed idea of the colours I’m hoping to create.  I see them in my mind and that’s what I’m aiming for as I mix up the dyes.  And most of the time, I hit pretty close to the mark.  But sometimes…  sometimes what I pull out of the dyepot is nothing like what I was expecting.

And I’m always so disappointed, because I really wanted the colours I saw in my head.  But then I realise that even though the result wasn’t what I was expecting, it’s alright, because for someone else, it will be exactly what they were looking for.

Vineyard Stain was exactly that kind of dyeing disaster.  I was aiming for something else entirely, and couldn’t believe what came out of the dyepot.  And then I looked at it and realised it was lovely, with all the complexity and depth of a beautiful red wine.  When that skein sold, I was almost disappointed to not get to keep it myself!  And, because the colour had been a complete fluke, I wasn’t really sure I could reproduce it.

But I’d kept very careful notes as I dyed it and so, when I tried to create the same colourway again, I was relieved to see that what came out of the dyepot, though slightly more intense, was most definitely Vineyard Stain.  Maybe even better the second time around.

Into The Deep, on the other hand, was a completely different type of dyeing disaster.  What came out of the dyepot actually was what I’d been visualising in my mind but, in real life, it just didn’t look good.  Not at all.  I quickly tried a few different things to remedy the situation — a little more of this dye, a quick dip in that one — and I didn’t write any of them down.  And then I realised what shade this yarn really needed to make it alright, and I mixed it up and quickly submerged the skeins.  And what came out of the pot thirty minutes later was just breathtaking!  The silver lining to my dyeing disaster.

But I hadn’t written any of it down.  And I know — to my deep regret — I will never be able to produce Into The Deep again.

Scenes from a Fiber Life: Reskeining Freshly Cut Grass

By Stephanie

After the skeins are dyed, we reskein them into smaller, more manageable skeins to go in the shop.  And we do it outside, if it’s a nice day…  in the dappled sunlight with a glass of chilled mimosa.  This was my Sunday.

Freshly Cut Grass on the swift

From the swift onto the skein winder
The swift moving at high speed

And the result is one of my favourite colourways, Freshly Cut Grass

Getting So Much More than I Expected

By Stephanie

Because I mix almost all my colours directly from the primaries (blue, red, yellow, and black), it can be a challenge sometimes to control the colours.  I see a shade in my mind — or, more usually, a grouping of different colours together — and then I work back from there to figure out how I’d need to mix the primaries to get that combination.

It’s such a rush when I pull the yarn out of the dyebath and it’s exactly what I’d hoped.  I get so excited I could punch the air!

But sometimes what comes out of the dyepot is nothing like what I had expected.  That’s when I bite lip, turn it over in my hands, and look carefully at the yarn to see what adjustments I should make to bring out the best in the colours that have appeared before me.  A little more red, a single drop of black, a swirl of yellow at the very last moment… it can all make a world of difference to the final yarn.  And sometimes… sometimes what I get from that is far and away so much better than the colours I’d first hoped for in my mind.

Vineyard Stain was exactly such a yarn.  It was meant to be something completely different — I can hardly remember now what I was aiming for — but it surprised me completely when I pulled it out of the dyebath.  At first, I didn’t like what appeared at all.  But I made those little adjustments — a bit of this, a smidge of that — and put it back in the water.  And when it came out the second time, I fell head over heels in love.

This is an absolutely amazing yarn.  The colours — the depth of colours — are just gorgeous and I simply cannot get my camera to really capture them.  I may never be able to reproduce this yarn again but, oh!, how I hope I can!!!

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Sock Yarn, Fingering Weight Superwash Merino, in Vineyard Stain

When the grapes have been harvested and gathered into great piles at the end of each row, and the piles have been collected and taken to the winery, what is left in their place is a ruby-red mark where the sheer weight of the bounty crushed the succulent grapes and the dark juice escaped and ran down, leaving that beautiful, telltale stain — deep as burgundy in some places, soft as a rose in others — against the yellow-brown of the dry, sun-baked earth.

This skein is approximately 100g of Superwash Merino in a wonderfully soft 3-ply, fingering weight yarn.

Fiber Content: 100% Superwash Merino
Weight: Approximately 3.70oz / 105g
Colourway: Vineyard Stain, 100324-002
Care Instructions for the final item: Hand or Machine wash in tepid water, Lay flat to dry.

Each item is individually hand-dyed by the SpaceCadet, using professional grade acid dyes. Please be sure to buy enough for your project as the colours may not be able to be reproduced exactly.
SpaceCadet Creations is a smoke-free, pet-free environment.
Please remember that the colours in pictures may vary depending on your computer monitor. The colours in the photos are as accurate as possible.