Flatstock Dyeing, Anyone?

You know, no matter how much you know about a craft, there's always something else you can learn.

Last Sunday, I joined some of my colleagues from the Severn-Muskoka Knitting Guild for a flatstock dyeing workshop with Lynda Gemmell of Shelridge Yarns. 

In the interest of full-disclosure, dyeing isn't "my gig". It's too much like cooking, to me, but when we do it in a workshop setting, I can play along.  This is the second dye workshop I've taken with Lynda -- the first was hand-painting skeins.

The results of the day turned out like this:

My pieces are the ones with the pink in the foreground over the middle bar and the purple/iris blue over the back bar. 

Workshops are amazing things to go to with a group of creative people in your circle.  I can't recall who made the two pieces in the middle, but I know that Denise made the piece on the bottom left of the photo.  By Lynda's guidance and Denise's colour-sense, these will make some great socks!

Terry did the piece in the background with the sunset tones.  Like me, she did two pieces, and plans to make a sunset-themed piece.

The day after the workshop, once my work had dried, I unravelled the dyed blanks to create skeins.  This is how they turned out (forgive the low light of the photo):

After that, I washed the skeins to relax the yarn, then, after they were dry,  I wound them into cakes so that I can do centre-pull balls.  Because of the way I chose to paint the knitted blanks,  I got this cool-looking knitted cake that looks like a very expensive yarn kit that is currently on the market:

I'm pretty pleased with the result, and am currently working on a pattern to make a stole from the centre-back outward to the ends using a provisional cast-on.  Stay tuned to this blog.  I'll let you know what happens.