The cashmere yarn I’m using for the Endpaper Mitts came from the stash I adopted last year. There were lots of small batches of yarn in that stash – most likely leftovers from projects. I kept the cashmere despite not being in love with the colours because, well, it’s cashmere.

After knitting one repeat I was totally in love with the yarn. I made such a soft, cushy fabric. The pattern was easy and so far it was coming out the right size. But there was one problem.

The pale green and coffee colours were too close in tone, so the pattern was hard to discern. I knit one repeat, put it aside, and examined it the next morning in natural light. Deciding I was right, I then frogged back to the ribbing, skeined up the coffee coloured yarn and got out my dyeing supplies.

I also skeined up two other balls. Last year I ordered these over the phone:

Unfortunately the lovely and helpful yarn shop owner’s idea of a ‘strong, rich green’ were different to my own. I have been intending to dye the pale aqua I got to a royal blue ever since, but I had only vague ideas for using the yarn so I never got around to the dyeing.

After some mixing, stirring and simmering I had four skeins dyed. The berry red was perfect. The blue dye, however, turned out more like a sky blue than the royal blue on the jar label, but would work just as well. There was clearly plenty of blue dye left in the water, so I went through my sock yarn leftovers and skeined up some plain and varigated yarns. They went into the pot and onto the stove and came out just as richly dyed as the first batch.

Last night I reknit the first repeat of the Endpaper Mitts pattern…

Much better!

The sky blue yarn works with the richer yarns much better than the pale aqua ever did.

And if I combine the newly-dyed sock yarn with some other leftovers I have a nice mix for a pair of Scrappy Socks.

All in all, a successful bit of dyeing. I got to wondering, as I was stirring away, why I don’t dye more often. I think it’s partly because I like to have a purpose for the yarn. Not that I have anything against dyeing for the sole purpose of experimenting with dye techniques. But I do hesitate to buy yarn for dyeing if I don’t have an end use in mind because, at the end of the day, it still means I’m increasing the stash.