Sunday, January 07, 2007

Lorna's Laces question

Dear Cynthia,

I'll finish posting about zipper installation later this week. (I sewed the zipper in, but before posting about it again, I want to make some sketches to use as visual aids.)

In the meantime, I'm finishing up some loose ends here. These socks are for my mom's friend who *gave* me lots of high quality knitting stuff -- yarn, needles, needle organizer, etc. Included in that batch was a bunch (six hanks) of Lorna's Laces sock yarn, and all she wanted in return was a pair of socks made out of the purple hanks. So, here they are! Now that they are done (not sure why it took me this long to realize it), it is clear to me that "dye lot" may not mean the same thing to everybody. These socks are clearly not the same color -- one is definitely darker than the other -- both made from yarn in the exact same dye lot, though each from a different hank. Any thoughts about that? Any similar experiences out there with Lorna's Laces?? It's probably not too big of a deal, although most people do have both feet in close proximity to each other, so it's not as though one sock will be hanging out too far from the other sock. Maybe after a few washings things will even out.....

Cleaning up other loose ends, you may remember the hand painted yarn I was using for a sweater, but which was causing me great angst because I wasn't sure if I would have enough yarn... It was the third sweater back when I was embarking on the "three sweaters in three months" challenge -- right before sanity took over again? Anyway, I am putting the thing out of its misery. For the first time in my life, the yarn was speaking to me -- more like screaming -- "this sweater thing isn't going to work out -- I really want to be a shawl". And so, I'm listening, with some relief, because I really wasn't sure where I was headed with all of that...

And, it's the Red Scarf Project time of year again, so I bought some Wool-ease for that.

I hope you're having a nice weekend and a Happy Epiphany!

Warm regards,
Laura (YarnThrower)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The socks are lovely.

I think that there's a often a wide variation in skeins even within the same dyelot with handpainted yarns. The only way to really avoid it would have been to work each sock from two skeins, alternating rounds. It truly will not matter. Most people wear their socks under shoes and pantlegs and no one will be the wiser.

Designated Knitter said...

I love the socks!

I agree with Elizabeth that variations in the same dye-lots of hand-paints can be dramatic. I've not noticed it with Lorna's Laces, but one of my favorite yarns "Celestial Merino" by Lucy Neatby has wide variation within the same skein! The skeins are large enough do to a about 3 socks, and the pair I made change quite a bit not just in saturation, but also in the dominant color. I also noticed it in the same yarn when I made a scarf. An overall blue on one end was an overall green by time I got to the other end!

I like to call it "character...."