It's All About Color

The fabulous Amy King came to town. She is Hot and loads of fun. She brought me a present which I love. The lovely Chelsea is modeling it. It is handspun Merino / Tencel that she crocheted into a beautiful scarf.

Beauty shot.

Then we got to work with the dyeing. She didn't make me fall in love with dyeing but she does do some very different things that I haven't seen other dyers do. I was quite impressed.
+There was some shopping during breaks and at other times:-)
At the end of the room there are the tops we dyed. On Friday evening we dyed Organic Merino which was so beautiful. On Saturday we dyed Finn. We also did some spinning which I will talk about in a sec.
Those are the three that I dyed. The top two are the exact same colors. The more purple one was soaked in cold water and then cold dye was poured on and then it was heated. The middle one, same colors, soaked in hot water and hot dye was poured on and then it was put in the steamer for a bit. You can see the dye struck much faster and almost no blending happened.
The bottom one was an experiment I did. I didn't soak the fiber at all. Hot dye was poured on dry fiber and then put in the steamer. I like it a lot.
On Saturday we also did some spinning experiments. All of the above yarns were made with the same dyed top. The top one was stripped into 8 pieces and then spun and plyed to a two ply. The center one was not stripped at all. It was just spun back and forth accross the top of the fiber and the bottom one was just spun thick and thin and left as a single.

There were some other things I was supposed to do i think but I am a pretty bad student.
Chelsea has been over taken with the dyeing. Last year she took a handpaints class with CJKoho who's fibers we also carry. She had a great time. And now that she's had another taste she is off and running. She's is developing repeatable colors.
Keep an eye on the webstore in the next week or so when these fibers will be introduced for sale to the public. I'm very impressed with her color talent and also that so far, no felting at all!

And before I go I just want to mention that there is still room in the upcoming classes with Galina Khmeleva. Friday evening will be spindle spinning and Saturday/Sunday an Orenburg Warm Shawl Construction class I've been wanting to take for years and is rarely offered.
Check out the classes page for all the info.

Oh, and also, we've added a page called Workshops to the website. It lists the classes I am currently teaching and am available to teach to your group. I'm happy to travel or have you come to me.