I love heathered yarns. These are the yarns I’m always drawn to at the yarn store due to their color depth and complex shades. Not surprisingly, when I dye and spin yarn, I often have a heathered effect in mind that I am aspiring toward in the finished product. Over the years I’ve learned or stumbled across several different methods of creating multi-shaded yarns, and I would like to share some of my knowledge. Therefore, in this post, I will explore several different ways to create roving for these types of yarns using a dye pot, different types of fiber and a carder.
Simply put, heathered yarns contain multiple individual colors instead of being one solid color. They can be composed of anywhere from two colors to many colors, but the colors are usually evenly distributed throughout and not in defined sections or stripes. Here are some examples of heathered yarns:
Mohair/shetland wool
Alpaca/CVM
Cheviot wool
Let’s look at different ways of creating heathered yarns:
1) Using different fiber types
Different fibers take dye differently. For example, if you dye alpaca, wool and mohair the same color in the same dyepot, the resulting color can be quite different for each fiber.
Here is a photo of three fibers that came out of the same dyepot. The wool is on the left, alpaca in middle and mohair on the right.
wool on left, alpaca in middle, mohair on right
In my experience, alpaca and mohair fibers tend to come out lighter than wool. Even though the photo above makes the mohair look darker than the wool, once you card it up and separate the fibers, it looks lighter. Mohair in particular also has a luster to it that makes it look very different from wool. Therefore, you can combine different fibers that are dyed the same color and often the result is a heathered yarn. Below is a photo from a hooded scarf that I spun and knit from shetland wool and mohair. They were dyed together, but you can see that the mohair is much lighter and lends the yarn a white sheen, making the yarn look heathered. For more information about the hooded scarf project and photos of the fiber preparation, you can go to: http://forestgnome.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/mounds-of-fiber/
2) Using a light and dark shade of the same color
Another way of creating heathered yarns is to combine a light and a dark shade of a color and blend them together. Last year I knit my mother a sweater out of a light brown suri alpaca and a medium brown/gray wool cvm fleece. I put them both in the same dyepot and here’s what emerged:
cvm wool on top and suri alpaca on bottom
cvm wool on bottom and suri alpaca on top
In the first photo the cvm wool, which was brown/gray to begin with was dyed a dark green and the suri alpaca, which was a very light brown was dyed a bright vibrant green. In the second photo the same fibers were dyed a dark yellow. When I combined the two, I got this:
These yarns have a real depth of color and you can see both the light vibrant colors and the dark colors in them.
Another simple way to achieve a similar effect is to combine a bright color with either a white or dark fiber. Two to three passes through the carder will distribute the white or black fleece throughout the batt evenly, but will still show the colors distinctly.
3) Combining several complementary colors together
A third way of creating heathered yarns is to dye several complementary colors separately and then combine them in a way that distributes them evenly throughout your batt. A few months ago I decided to spin yarn for a baby hoodie for a friend. I wanted it to be a peach color, but because the pattern is a very simple stockinette knit, I decided that a multi-colored heathered yarn would make it more interesting. Therefore I dyed up additional wool in yellow, rose and purple colors and blended it together.
Here is the fiber just out of the dye pot:
cheviot wool dyed in peach, yellow, pink and purple
Here is what the carded batts of each color look like:
From left to right on top: yellow, purple and pink wool. The peach wool is on the bottom.
Since I wanted peach to be the dominant color and the other colors to be “splashes” in the main color, I carded the fibers to achieve an even distribution of the secondary colors within the batt. I carded the colors in layers, alternating a layer of the peach and another layer of the three colors in thirds:
The carder drum contains one layer of the secondary colors in which the colors are in strips: pink on the left, yellow in the middle and purple on the right. The bottom tray contains a solid layer of peach that will go on top of the secondary colors.
The next layer contains all three secondary colors again but arranged in a different order: purple, pink and yellow.
The reason for this is to distribute the secondary colors evenly throughout the entire batt. I then repeated the whole process (layers of solid peach and alternating layers of the secondary colors in different positions each time) until I had a full batt. Here’s what it looked like after one pass through the carder:
batt after one pass through the carder
The colors are mixed together, but they are clearly in layers on top of each other.
Here’s what it looks like after three passes through the carder:
All the colors are mixed together evenly.
The number of times that the fiber is passed through the carder also directly affects the way the colors are distributed. If it is passed through the carder a single time, the colors will be much more distinct and in sections. The more times the batt is carded, the better the color distribution becomes. Here is an example of the same fiber combination carded one, two and three times:
From left to right: Batt is carded once, carded twice and carded three times.
I chose to card my batt three times to get good distribution. Here is what the yarn looks like when knitted. It is very close to the look I was going for – a peach background with splashes of bright colors.
knitted swatch
