Growing

I started making crochet flowers from my rainbow-dyed skein yesterday morning. It's a bit addictive so I made several. My friend L liked them, but suggested they needed to be bigger. I have  been making bigger versions of the various crochet flowers by using a thicker yarn and a matching (bigger) crochet hook, but this particular yarn is a one-off. Admittedly all my hand-dyed yarns are one-offs, but this one particularly so. I painted the colours onto the skein with thickened dyes to make a complete colour wheel for every two metres of yarn--I used my biggest niddy-noddy to make the skein. Doubling the yarn once it's been dyed isn't really an option because I need to keep the clarity of the colour changes. So I had to try something different.

To make bigger flowers with the same yarn I needed to increase the size of each petal--taller stitches and more stitches. I didn't know how far I could push it before the resulting fabric would no longer hold its shape, so I went step by step. I ran out of yarn before I found the limits of my system. It was an interesting experiment and the flowers are bright and fun. I need to do some clearing up around the house before I dare pull out my procion dyes to attempt some more rainbow skeins, but never fear: there are plenty of other yarns for me to play with in the meantime.