Sunday, June 19, 2011

A Dye Day With Fiber Friends, Spinning & Knitting Progress

Last Sunday was spent with my Happy Hands Fiber Friends at our monthly get together.  This time, we had a dye day.  Dave and Sue generously offered the use of their garage for this.  I forgot to bring my camera so have no pictures.  :( 

It was a cool, comfortable day with lots of experimenting and playing with colors.  Liz, from Fibers4Ewe, did a demo about cellulose dyes and then some of us attempted yarn/fiber dyeing with them.  I did a purple/blue with red/pink colors on some Bamboo/Wool yarn.  The result is quite different from using acid dyes. 

We also used primary colors, mixed from acid dyes, and created our own colors for other items.  Sandi had brought a couple pre-mixed colors as well.  I dyed up some Masham fiber and some of Mr. Attitude's locks.  The locks came out quite interesting since they were naturally shades of gray and white. The color in the picture isn't exactly correct.  The orange seems to be over powering the other colors.  The end result reminds me of Autumn leaves.











In between dyeing, some of us were spinning, knitting, or just chatting.  There was lots of terrific food available from the pot luck lunch/barbecue we had as well.  It was terrific to see everyone again.  A surprise visitor was Liz from Maine who I hadn't seen in a couple years. 

As for knitting progress, I've finished my Flutter By socks.  I really like how they came out.  I have enough yarn to use with a similar color to make another pair of socks later. 


My Evenstar Shawl has seen a good amount of love lately.  As of about an hour ago, I am starting repeat 30.  I'm over half finished with the edging and am looking forward to a completed shawl soon. I've got another mystery shawl to knit, but am forcing myself to finish this one first.  Here's the yarn for knitandknag's Mystic Midsummer Wreath Shawl KAL which started a couple days ago. 


On the spinning front, I finished the DyakCraft a/k/a Grafton Fibers Club January 2009 batt.  I'm quite happy with the results.  I plan to spin the second batt some time during Tour de Fleece which starts in a couple weeks.  I still need to finish the last bit of "Honey Cinnamon" that has been hanging out on my Sonata wheel for a month.  Hmmm. I think I'll got do that now. 

I also forgot to post the picture of my May Project Stash Buster yarn, and the Silver Sun Alpaca's "Lavander Vanilla" batts I had spun up. 

 








O.K. It's time for me to spin for a bit and then get back to that edging.  My goal is to get at least two more repeats done today.