Branching out

It’s hard to believe I’ve been dyeing yarn for something like six years. Even though I mix the dyeing up with other endeavors, like designing and writing, it’s still easy to get into a rut. After being away from the dyepots for a few weeks to do other things, I realized I had next to no inventory. And I realized that I was going to be appearing at Abby Franquemont’s Stringtopia Spring String Thing at the end of April, so I’d better do some dyeing fast.

When I first started dyeing, I did mostly traditional handpainting, segments of color applied to a hank laid flat on a table. As I began to dye more, I began experimenting with some other techniques for applying the dye to the yarn. Lately I’ve been playing around with less controlled dyeing, trying to achieve some different effects, like speckles and more mottled runs of color. Here are some of the results:

I am enjoying trying some slightly different techniques, although I am still doing some more traditional handpaints, like this one,

and I still dearly love creating semisolids that are a bit complex, since they do such a nice job of showing off stitchwork:

I am also applying these techniques to rovings, like this Falkland wool:

I’ve listed these in my Artfire shop; please note that on Wednesday evening, April 24th, I’ll put the shop on vacation and take all that’s left with me to Stringtopia for vending, so if you’ve got your eye on something, best to snap it up now. To make it easier, here’s a coupon code for free shipping on orders of $25 in merchandise or more:  SPRINGSTRING (cannot be applied to prior purchases; expires 6 p.m. EST Wednesday April 24th).

If you can make it to southwestern Ohio, I’d love to see you there!