This is a sweater’s worth of recycled angora blend yarn, which I dyed into a ‘rainbow’ of red shades, from light pink to a deep burgundy. I actually dyed and photographed this project in my last few days living in Whistler, before moving into my new apartment in Vancouver, but it’s taken me awhile to get it up on the blog.

To get these coordinated shades, I tossed the entire lot into the pot, and then pulled out the skeins one by one once I felt like they’d reached the right depth of color. As I went, I had to toss a bit more dye into the pot as well, so that I could reach the deeper colors, which required the addition of some blue. I’m pretty excited with the results.

I’ve had a few thoughts about how to work with this yarns:

  • working single-row stripes which transition gradually and somewhat randomly from light through dark
  • working multi-color slip-stitch patterns (Barbara Walker’s treasuries have MANY examples of this)
  • working more than one strand of each yarn together, and shifting the strands to create a subtle ‘ombre’ effect – perhaps in an interesting texture pattern?

The thing about the yarn is that it is quite small gauge (fingering?) and it doesn’t have very much stretch at all, which makes it a bit tiring to work with, so while I was VERY excited while dying it, I’m not sure how much I’ll like knitting it up. Maybe I’ll hold two strands together to get worsted/heavy worsted and then make some pillow covers, or something else that is fast and satisfying… lace medallion pillows perhaps? Check back later to see swatches!