I DYED! (gasp)

This post is dedicated to lovely Sonya, who has been hoping for a pic BESIDES the darn spinning wheel! LOL!

How is THIS????



Three skeins of goregeous, heavenly soft 100% superwash merino fingering weight yarn (440 yards!) that I dyed on Saturday. (eeee....they're so awesome!)

Details:

WHAT- Dyeing class with THE Cheryl Potter of Cherry Tree Hill yarns. (tiny scream!) [Here she is getting the dyes ready for the class]



WHERE- Yarn and Fiber Co. in Windham, NH....Cyndi was, of course, wonderfully friendly, helpful and had things pretty well organized for such a big group (over 20) in such a small amount of space. [Here's Cyndi with some of her crew winding up skeins of undyed Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn]



WHEN April 14th, 2007 from 1-4 pm

HOW Well, it's not really a how...but, you know...Cheryl (and her sweet daughter) gave us handouts and she explained a bit about everything...what handpainted yarn is and how many factors together determine what the final product is....the dye itself, the type of fiber and how the yarn is constructed. I found everything extremely helpful and interesting...especially her idea of "inspiration/creation/translastion"...how you think of something that inspires you, use your fingers to create that image and then that, in turn, gets translated into how the yarn comes out. Another helpful tip..."Less is More/Don't make Mud!".

[here she is with her daughter...sorry she's so blurry...a phone pic!]



Before we started to dye, she had 4 of us do a crayon demonstration....(including me, Ericka and Rose!)....she gave us a box of crayons, a piece of white paper and wrote down a colorway. We had to picture what the colorway meant to us in our minds and then translate that into a colorway on paper. Here's mine: It was "Blue Bayou":



[Can I brag here? I was nervous that she made me go first (I had NO idea what to say), but said that my colorway was "perfect", an A+.....that was SOOO cool! Complimented by Cheryl Potter??? I'm in heaven!]

Ericka's "City Lights" was really pretty (the colors gave the point across well) and Rose had "Tangerine Dream", in which she mixed orange and yellow together for a kind of "drink" type color. Very cool.

After we did that, a group of 7 went up at a time and started to dye...Cheryl helped everyone and it was so much fun experimenting and squirting dye here and there....there weren't any fist fights over the dye bottles...but it was close at some points! [here is the first group that went up]

Nichole (who I was happy to hang out with before the class started) and Heather also created gorgeous colorways. Heather's was "Pansy" and, boy, it looked JUST like it! I wish I'd remembered what colorway Nichole created. I was so busy dyeing MORE skeins that my mind went blank. Ericka's final yarn (one of the two) had a pretty Japanese name that I liked and it was a sweet color, too.

All in all, I had a FANTASTIC day! Cheryl was wonderful....and she even gave all of us a Potluck Sock pattern. I got one signed, too! (I am SUCH a geek!)

Now, on to the YARN!!!

The colorways I created are:

Baby's Breath-pale purples, peach, turquoise and pink.



Wild Cherry Love-bright red, deep pink and paler pink.



Handsome Hiker-fern green, blue, grays, and forest greens.



The first two yarns will be on my Etsy shop by tonight....BUY NOW! The other one I'm saving to knit for Ian....since he is the handsome hiker! (I thought the name "Handsome Geocasher" didn't have QUITE the same feeling)

P.S. Two other updates....here is the yarn I spun for Jackie for her birthday (which is on Monday)...called "Endless Bliss"...it's a 50/50 baby alpaca/merino 2ply fingering weight....with 356 yards out of 2.5 ounces. The BEST yarn I've ever spun so far...



AND, speaking of dyed yarn...I got my "Mandy" yarn from Awesome Amy ofSpunky Eclectic for my new sweater and socks to match. I actually got this a while ago and kept forgetting to blog it. The yarn is so soft and the colors are great....can't wait to knit it up!



Any comments??