sheep in the city

Carding and Dying

It all started with a contest over Joanne's Keep Talking page. She had a contest a while back for who could find the ugliest knitting pattern. I won second prize, which was a box full of fleece. Not being a spinner or dyer, I had no clue what I was going to do with it! But...I remembered what a great resource I had in the DenverKnits group. (It's a yahoo group for Colorado based knitters.) So I laid out how clueless I was, made a few suggestions...and Judy came to the rescue! She offered for me to come to her house, with two of my knitting buddies, and she would teach us all how to card wool and pull it into pencil roving, and then rainbow dye it! Wow! Sounds like fun, huh?! I knew it was an involved process, but I now have a much better appreciation for "handpainted" yarn and people who make their own yarn on a regular basis! You have my utmost respect!!

We went over to Judy's about 1:00pm, Sunday afternoon. And boy was it hot! In the 90's by 11:00...sheesh! Judy has a dye kitchen set up in the third bay of her garage. It was very cool, in the neat-o sense, not temperature:) Anyway, long story short, I learned a ton, made a mess, and had a lot of fun in the process!! Thank you, thank you Judy!

Judy showing me how her carding machine works. Fascinating stuff!

RayLynn, Judy, and I getting messy!!

"Hand Painting" the pencil-roving.

Posted by Stacey at July 13, 2004 10:28 PM