When Stained Skeins are Good

I picked up a new yarn the other day. Rather, a couple of new yarns - well things really. Its not just any yarns.

Stained Skeins is a local to me hand dyer. She has had an etsy presence for several years and has just brought some of her hand dyes in.

Stained Skeins are lovely things. Like most hand dyers she started with yarn. I've chosen a gorgeously rich toned skein of olive greens, warm reds, teals, coppers oranges and almost everything in between. As usual, olives tones don't photograph well, and the photo quality just doesn't do the yarn justice. All the basics are there, and the colours are correct, but it is so much richer, warmer and denser in hand. It's a thing of great beauty. About the only thing that isn't here is pastel. There is quite simply nothing pastel on any of these skeins.

After Stained Skeins worked with yarns for a while, she began to work on sock blanks. She does up the blanks herself, allowing her to customise the process to the style of sock knitter you are.

Her singles sock blanks are a pair of blanks meticulously dyed side by side so that when completed, your socks will be a closely matched set. This kind of blank is great if you knit single socks at a time.

Because she was producing the blanks herself, she took the process one step further. She began to build double stranded blanks. These double stranded blanks, when dyed, produce matched socks. Not closely matched socks. Matched socks. These double stranded blanks are great if you work your socks two at a time, on whatever needles you choose. You can still choose one of these blanks if you prefer, like me, to knit on one sock at a time (I'm a sock dinosaur, dpns, and one at a time), but you can wind the blanks onto balls and work as usual if the colours you prefer come in a double stranded blank.

Stained Skeins includes a generous, make that very generous, little blank of silk, hand dyed to match for reinforcing the heel with some skeins and blanks. This little skein is enough that no matter how you knit your heel, you will something of it left over. I think I'll have enough left over to do another re-inforcing on the inside once the socks are completed.

I have also decided that if I am a long way from getting my Christmas knitting done, I could take these long blanks, do a quickie three needle bind off, and voila, short striped scarf, that could be made into socks anytime the wearer chose. A digression, I know. Please excuse me.

I wanted to see what the sock blank I chose would turn out to be...

Yeah, that is what it was. Seriously, I was sitting there, ready to begin, and started with the blank over the skein of yarn because I did not have to wind up the yarn. This singly prepped sock blank thing could be a real benefit to us lazy types. No winding!

I'm most pleased to show you the unique thing that happens with a hand dyed blank. Do you see how, when unravelled, the strand is not a solid colour? Its magic. Serious magic. I'd noticed something unique about the colours of the sample socks displayed at the store for this yarn, and now I understand its secret. These delightful blanks produce an utterly unique look. Heathered, yet not heathered. Deep and vibrant yet subtle. Solidly coloured, yet not solid. They have a look all their own.

You will produce a perfectly matched pair of socks with this yarn, without any effort at all, but no one, no one is going to mistake this beautifully matched pair for anything other than a Folk Art master work handcrafted by you.

I love socks for a lot of reasons. I love hand dyers for a lot of reasons. I think I'm going to love this entirely different approach to socks and yarn too.

Stained Skeins, where, when stains are good they are very very good.