Yarn KAL and the Lazy Woman Method

I finally finished spinning the yarn for my South Cape. It seemed to take forever but it should be said I think I spun up more than I need. The yarn is a bit thin in places but could fluff up (the official terminology is bloom I believe?) after a while. Some bits are just thin, but such is the whimsy of handspun, especially when I just couldn't be bothered to try and make it perfect.

I did dye it, using my unpatented Lazy Woman's Technique. I wanted there to be some colour variation, more or less subtle and in the same colour range, nothing too stripy or blocky. Lord knows I do not have the time right now or the inclination to be carefully squirting one shade away of this next to two shades away of that, especially on a significant amount of yarn. I've messed around with this method-I use that word lightly-before with satisfactory results. It sounds time consuming in the way baking a loaf of bread does, but the reality is that most of the work is done by the dye and the yarn. Here is what I do:

First, make sure you have too much yarn for your dyepot. I have never done this with fleece, only yarn.

Mix up your first round of dye. It help a LOT to be familiar with your brand of dye. I use Landscape dyes by Kolour Kraft. So bloody easy.

Anyway, the first round acts as your base. This is kind of like painting-lay down the first foundations of colour to build up the future colours. My yarn was already naturally coloured (dark tan), but I did this step anyway. If you go straight ahead on pure white, I find it just ends up looking like a bad dye job.

Get your dye pot ready and stick in your wet(to paraphrase Salt-n-Pepa, s-s-soak it real good) yarn. Stir it around. Remember, there should be just a little too much yarn for your pot. Now, let it alone. The stuff at the top should be floating above the top of the water line, but still getting some dye. Let it simmer away. After about 30 minutes, go and give it a flip, and leave it again for however long you feel it needs. Sometimes I give it a few more flips, but because the dye bath is starting to exhaust itself, the yarn at the bottom doesn't get as intense. With the yarn for the South Cape, I made up a purply dye, a medium strength solution. Some of the yarn was a hideous taupe, other bits were bright red violet, etc etc. When you think it's finished, take it out, rinse, and dry, so you can see what you've got.

After the skeins are dry, repeat the process with the colour you really want the yarn to be. It seems a more intense shade works better. I left it in the pot for ages. I think I forgot about it and went to the shops. I chose a teal colour, and now have skeins of yarn that go from a grayish greeny blue to a deep teal. I am quite happy with it. I wanted to keep to the spirit of the South Cape, so I thought of the water around Cape Shanck on the Mornington Peninsula, another rather cool and often fierce place, but also one of great beauty.
Fresh from the dye pot.
The South Cape commences!

The Lazy Woman method of dying is quite fun, but you cannot be a perfectionist or you'll have a heart attack. You also have to have a correction colour at the ready in case the whole thing turns out to be horrible. Mine was navy.

The South Cape is so much fun to knit. I was worried I wouldn't have it finished in time, but it shouldn't be a problem. It's all I want to do. There is so much laundry to put away...