Hand Dyed Yarn
Knitting with Colors
For some, knitting garments is about painting with wool. If you've never experimented with color in your knitting projects, the first thing you must do is to clear your mind of some inhibiting preconceptions and prejudices that you may have built up over the years. And as you progress with your use of colored yarns in your knitting projects you'll almost certainly want to use hand dyed yarns and their wonderful colorways. Without doubt, hand dyed yarns will give your knitted garments a unique and beautiful quality that ordinary colored yarn is quite unable to do.
Choosing Hand Dyed Yarns
Each fiber takes dye differently. Natural fibers take on color differently than does made made fibers; to many, natural fibers are by far the better. However, man-made fibers are usually cheaper, so if you find a man-made fiber with a delectable shade, then by all means, use it. Wool, cotton and silk all take on color differently. Silk, especially, takes color gorgeously and shines it back if polished, or glows with a matt depth if raw. You can use hand-dyed silk like you might use mohair, to lighten a garment that's getting heavy with chunky tweeds and thick cottons.
If you're new to knitting with hand-dyed yarns you should be aware that each skein is unique even in the same dye lot. When working with hand dyed yarns you should work with a couple of inches and then change to another skein. Keep rotating skeins throughout your project for an even pattern.
Where to buy hand dyed yarns?
The good news is that there are now many producers of quality hand dyed yarn. Many specialize in unusual fiber types, such as qiviut (the undercoat of a muskox) or Uruguayan merino wool. Many producers remain small, family run affairs where one can only buy their hand dyed yarns from knitting workshops, festivals and events. But there are some manufacturers who are able to produce sufficient quantities of hand dyed yarns to be able to sell through their own mail-order systems or through a chain of independent yarn stores.
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