Kiss My Knits!

This weekend, I took a two-day workshop sponsored by the Charlotte Knitting Guild. It was taught by Merike Saarniit of Liisu yarns. With the browser crash that ate my post the first time I tried to write this, the sparkling text has been wrung right out of me. Therefore, I’ll just pass along my husband’s “witty” comment, repeated over the entire week: “I have to laugh every time you say you’re going to learn how to die in the microwave.”

Day one was dyeing yarn, day two was knitting with hand-dyed yarn, emphasizing using contrasting yarns and stitch patterns that may help reduce pooling. A good time was had by all!

With no further ado, on to the pics.

scouring First we gave our yarn a good soak in hot water and Louet Fibermaster to help remove the lanolin and crud from the fiber to enable it absorb the dye more easily. Two more rinses and it’s time to dye.

mixing dyes Merike brought plenty of Country Classic dyes, along with shade cards and color wheels so we could make informed choices about our colors. However, she instructed us firmly not to agonize over our colors, and suggested picking a bottle with our eyes closed if we were waffling.

suck it up! Merike Saarnit shows Paula how to suck up dye in a straw and apply it to various parts of the yarn. Merike is a braver woman than I, to wear such nice clothes in a room full of neophyte dyers.

striping a hank Paula starts to work with a nice purple. Merike moves on to offer advice to the next student.

injecting dye A guild member dyes a wound ball pink, then uses a syringe to inject a complementary color at points inside. It’ll be interesting to see how the dye is distributed. Piper looks over my work in the background.

rinsing After the yarn has come out of the microwave and rested to set the color, we rinse it to get any remaining dye out. The water runs clear, and we’re good to go!

first batch As Merike comments, guild members look over our work, which has been hung to dry in the warm sun. Lesson learned: small hanks of yarn plus wind equals yarn blowing all over the grass.

break! We had a catered lunch delivered. I need to find out who provided these – my ham, apple, and brie sandwich was absolutely delicious. Prostiturtle, feeling under the weather, turns away from her lunch in a valiant effort not to become ill. She felt better by early afternoon.

Spinning Whenever the guild gets together, it’s an opportunity to learn something new. Here, it was an impromptu lesson on using a drop spindle.

drying Most of our skeins, hung out to dry. We all picked fairly different color combinations, and some that looked unpromising at first turned out to be the most spectacular of all.

handpainted worsted This is the first skein I dyed. It wound up more pastel than I thought it would, but I like it. To achieve the lavender, I mixed some of the blue with the pink near the bottom, to tie those two colors together. Similarly, with the aqua, I made sure to put some of the blue into the mix so that it would have those overtones. I didn’t want anything too disparate. This is Lamb’s Pride worsted in Aran that has been in my stash for years. Finally, I may get some use out of it.

first sock skein The second batch I dyed, and the colorway I like best. I wanted something oceanic. I decided to keep it variegated within a single color family. The bottom is a different shade of aqua, but has some of the top mixed in and diluted. I spotted the whiter sections with the blue-green and pressed them well to fade the dye over a section. I didn’t want it striped, but more free-form. It may just knit up blotchy, but I’ll be interested to see!

blue, green, and gray/black sock yarn The last skein I dyed. I oversaturated it and didn’t close my plastic wrap yarn sausage enough. Some of the excess black dye leaked into the container holding other yarns. There were casualties. I owned up to my mistake and everyone was quite nonchalant about it, but I still wished a hole would open up in the earth to swallow me. Where’s that freakin’ time machine when you need it?

Three handpainted skeins My precioussss…

Jane swatches Jane Prater considers her swatch at the second day workshop on knitting with hand-dyed yarn. Jane is a very experienced knitter and inspired designer. In addition to being an excellent knitting teacher, she was my eighth grade English teacher – and my Girl Scout leader, to boot! I won’t speak of that terrible night camping with the scouts on King’s Mountain, but I will say that mi l33t ritin skilz is cuz of her!1!!

Prostiturtle swatches That’s prostiturtle’s gorgeous yellow and green handpainted yarn from the previous day’s workshop. I swear, it really does look like Lorna’s Laces “Daffodil.” See the smile? Feelin’ good today!

By the last hour or so of the second day, I think most of our heads were about to explode from all the knowledge. This was both good and bad. For me, it was literally like I was being poked in the brain every time someone said a word – I had that much trouble concentrating. I also got blurry vision and occasional shooting pains in my right arm and had to knock off knitting for the rest of the night, just as a preventative measure. However, that wasn’t until the very end of the end of the second day. I took more frequent breaks and knocked off a little early. Even with that, I had a good time and am very glad that I went.