14 June, 2009

Two in one night, I know...

But I had promised a post about my class and this one has a couple of pictures. None from said class, but I do have them of my yarn that was the result.
Overall, it was great. Amy was very friendly and a good teacher. The class was small, five of us total so it was personal and easy to ask questions. I had never thought of dyeing yarn in a crockpot or on a hot plate before. It was a basic class on the kettle dyeing method, so nothing fancy. It was fun to be able to splash color all over the yarn willy nilly and let it soak and even out. We had a limited number of colors, but everyone's turned out so different. I sort of wish I had been in the afternoon session instead of the morning: two of my fellow Snobs were in that one and I suspect that the afternoon didn't have to be as rushed as we did. We were supposed to dye two skeins of yarn but could only make it through one in the time alloted. Our first, which is what we dyed, is a fat skein of BMFA's STR base. I want to say it's 600yds. Our second skein, we got to pick between a few options and I grabbed a nice sportweight silk/merino blend. When I get a chance, I need to get some acid dyes and equipment I can dedicate to dyeing and work on that. I don't foresee myself being so smitten with dyeing that I'd want to be an indie dyer, but it might change how I get yarn for projects. Because seriously, who wouldn't want as close to 100% control over the color of their project as they can get? No more heartache over a color that there just isn't enough of. Who hasn't thought something along the lines of, "Oh if only this color were a bit more ____..." or "a bit less____..."?

I had been going for a charcoal color with teal splashes, but I don't think we had quite the right dyes or enough time to tweek and play, but what I got was pretty nice.
I used black (which turned out more of a navy color), mouse grey, and at the end splashed on some teal. It's a very manly colorway and strikingly similar to my first installment of Plucky Classics which was shipped to me about that same time.

More teal, less black, and more mouse grey and they could have been twins. Same concept, different results. I got a serious laugh about it when I saw the spoiler pictures on Ravelry.

Since I have so much yardage of my yarn, I'm planning to finally make Mr. Knitpicky some socks. Size 13 socks in fingering weight won't be exciting or easy, but I'm pleased to know that I dyed the yarn that will be his colorway and that I'll have enough to make them.

I can't wait to see how this knits up.

3 comments:

SusanB-knits said...

Sounds like you had a fun class. The yarn you dyed is beautiful! I love the colors. They will make a great pair of socks for your husband.

Jen said...

Love it! It looks really nice. I think they sell dyes at Stonehill in Fredericksburg... How is the weather over there? I am not looking forward to finding out next week:)

Kitten said...

Oh man, love that yarn you dyed up. I have been a big fan of grey recently and I haven't thought of it in color combos with other bright colors like teal. Which is amazing since Thraven is one of the few STR colorways I still drool over.