Dying new summer blend yarn Verano with fiber reactive dyes
Featuring: Verano from Knomad 60% Fine Superwash Merino Wool 21.5 mic 30% Pima Cotton 10%...
Dye and Knit a Stripe Pullover in Soleil Fingering Merino Cotton Yarn
Since my love of knitting sweaters is well documented on this blog, you know full well that I struggle with the warmer months in LA. Finding exciting projects and creating cute knit-centric outfits is a big challenge when the weather is 79 degrees and sunny every day!
Naturally, I was super excited to hear Knomad just released a new Summer friendly yarn in two weights! Soleil, which comes in both fingering and DK weights, is a 4 ply yarn spun from a blend of cotton and merino wool. Soleil has a soft but not overly warm feel. There’s something calming and comforting about putting on a heavy cotton sweater on a warm summer night. It almost feels cooling to the touch!
A pattern caught my eye a couple months ago that I thought would be perfect for a cotton blend yarn. It is called the Stripe Overload Polo by Spektakel Strik. It calls for something like a worsted weight, so I decided to use two strands of Soleil Fingering weight yarn to get the correct weight.
Now I had to dye my yarn in two colors that would make nice stripes. Yellow is such a trend this summer, and I always love pink, so I decided to go with a deep honey mustard shade paired with a bright neon pink. The colors I used are both from Dharma Trading company – Honey Mustard (I used 4% dye to weight of fiber) and Fluorescent Fuchsia (I used 0.25% dye to weight of fiber). I used an equal amount of citric acid to dye in my dye bath.
The pattern is not super specific about how much ease is needed for this sweater. They leave it up to the knitter to decide. In my opinion, a sweater like this could use at least a few inches of positive ease. After knitting a quick gauge swatch, I found my gauge was a little tighter than the gauge specified in the pattern. Since I liked the feel of the fabric at the gauge I knit the swatch at, I did some quick math and determined the largest size, 2XL, would give me at least a couple inches of ease when knit at my gauge. In case you’re curious how I figured this out, here is how I did it: I took the number of stitches per inch from my swatch, and multiplied that by the chest measurement of the size closest to the size I wear. This gave me a rough idea of how many stitches my sweater should have around the chest. I checked the pattern to see which size matched the number of stitches I needed for my sweater. Based on this, I knew I needed to knit the 2XL.
I cast on as soon as my yarn dried! The sweater is proving to be a fun and fast knit. As I am writing this blog,I have almost finished the yoke and I’m just about to divide for the sleeves and lower body. I’ll have to update this post when my sweater is finished!
