Dye Class with Rita Petteys

Linda Adamson of Tabby Tree Weaver in Arcadia hosted a beginning dye class with Rita Petteys of "Yarn Hollow" . The class was fun! Rita covered immersion dyeing and handpainting of protein yarn and fibers with washfast acid dyes.

The best part about the class (aside from some of the cool tips and tricks Rita taught us) was getting to play with color! There was a box with perhaps 100 dye powders (don't trust my numbers here...I didn't really count, it just seemed like tons of color to a girl who owns three (count them, three) jars of dye!) and the same number of quart jars of dye solutions--all ready to be used!

We were given some instruction on making dye solutions, given the opportunity to practice, and then set loose. If we finished a dye solution we were to refill the jar, but we could use any and all colors we desired.

Wow!

My pictures are of three of the five projects I did. The first was a solid red, immersion dye on DK weight yarn. The second was a handpainted lace weight skein....and I left it in the shop! Dooh! (Linda has kindly offered to bring it to our next guild meeting so I can bring it home! :)

At the top is a falkland wool roving that I dyed with yellow, blue and a darker blue/black.


Next is some of my Romney roving that I squirted with orange, then added an olive green and a diluted leaf green.




And lastly, here is a sample knit piece that I dyed and will unravel and re-knit.

Rita has a nice post on sockblanks on her blog. I think I may need to go through this exercise myself to see how dye patterns on the blank translate into knitting.

It was a great day! Thanks to Rita, to Linda A., and to a fun bunch of classmates!