Showing posts with label dyeing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dyeing. Show all posts

Monday, March 17, 2008

I learned to dye yarn!

I just took a class on yarn dyeing at Village Wools. I love Village Wools because it feels like a community and it has an entire building full of wonderful, quality yarns and an abundance of knowledgeable people.

My class was in hand-painted yarn dyeing. We basically took one skein of yarn and wrapped it on a warping board in such a way that it created three connected skeins. Then we dyed each separately. After it dries, you unwind it all and wind it back together as one skein. The end result is that all the colors stripe together.

There are a few lessons I learned. The instructor told us to use superwash wool because the color would take better, but I wanted to use a thicker yarn, and it wasn't superwash. That's why my colors aren't as vibrant as I would have liked.

I don't love this one, but I thought it was going to be more of a disaster after it came out. The little areas that connected the three separate yarn sections had colors that bled strangely and I thought it would look really obvious. But once you unwind and rewind it, you see that each of those parts is quite short and unnoticeable. It's just bad at first because they are all grouped next to each other. In the end, if there's a white spot or something weird, it might only be a stitch or two on a knitted product.
For this one, I was thinking "sun, water, earth." In the end, the colors aren't great together. If the brown were darker and the yellow lighter, I might like it more.

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This one came out better. It's teal and golden ochre. (That reminds me of the Cat Stevens song "Angelsea" where he describes her "golden ochre hair" and I thought he was calling it "ogre" hair.)

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Saturday, March 8, 2008

Hand-painted yarn

I took my first of two classes on hand-painting yarn today. It's taught by the lady who runs Scout's Swag online and held at Village Wools.

I naturally chose some ridiculous 500 yard skein that ended up being rolled into a ball that could bowl over a small village if released from atop a hill. I am now regretting that as I try to wind it all into a 3-section skein to prepare it for dyeing next week.

It's really interesting and fun so far, and I'm so excited to get to learn it.

Next month is my spinning class. That would be yarn spinning and not exercise spinning. I'd rather die than do the latter. And I'd rather dye than die. Yeah, that was stupid. I'm really excited for spinning, though, because I'm hoping to buy a spinning wheel. I've saved up money and Village Wools store credit from my birthday and may soon be able to afford one. They just start at $350-$400.

In the end, I hope to be able to create interesting yarns of my dreams without spending $50 on yarn for a scarf. Maybe I can even sell some, who knows.

((Dear Mark: So what if all my hobbies are for 90-year-olds?))