Almost Knitting

So what was that almost knitting thing I mentioned yesterday? One of the LYS here in town made arrangements for a group of us to go down to Interlacements and dye afghan kits. Exceptionally cool. Er, hot actually. But very neat either way. Judy and Clay, the owners, walked us through the process and then supervised while we created havoc, and pretty yarn.

I got to play the mad scientist type and mix the dyes. Mwahhhahahaha.

See it at flickr

I'm seriously excited about how this will turn out. We dyed 6 different colorways and 4 different types of wool (ribbon, mohair, thick and thin, and boucle). Clay will be dying the skeins of cotton that goes into the kit. The afghan itself reminds me quite a bit of the Abfab kits by Colinette. Beautiful colors and soooo fun. We managed to get all the wool dyed before we left but some of it was still cooking and none of it was dry so I'll get to see the whole kit later this week. Here are two of the colorways drying.

See it at flickr

The skein at the middle bottom of the picture is one that gets put on the bottom of the pot while the rest of it dyes. It doesn't match any of the colorways but was beautiful anyway. I'm hoping to come across it at Estes next week.

We were a large group (16 total) and so Judy showed one group how to make silk paper while we were dying yarn with Clay. Then in the afternoon we swapped out. This silk paper stuff was totally cool!

See it at flickr

That's Carol in the photo there. She is very artistic and was so much fun to meet. The two "papers" are at the bottom of the photo are ready to be set. It's so simple. Just a bit of tulle, three layers of silk roving, some sort of fun novelty, and another bit of tulle. Then you soak it in wallpaper glue. And ta dah! Gooey, sticky, mess that dries into a beautiful paper (and then you peel the tulle off). Anybody else interested in making some? I totally want more! BTW, mines the third one back on the front row.

See it at flickr