Running In Circles

This blog has been rather neglected of late while I've been doing a lot of secret knitting. A few things (gifts) have recently become un-secret, so I'll show them soon. But first I have something else to share.

I spent a good part of tonight pacing back and forth across my living room and down the hallway. Why?



Over the weekend I attended a dyeing class for striping sock yarn with my friend Stephania of Three Fates Yarns. I've actually dyed stripey yarn before, way back in 2006 I did a stripey yarn dyeing class with Dani of Sunshine Yarns which for some strange reason didn't make it to the blog. Anyway...

In case you didn't know, dyeing self-striping yarns is lots of work. You have to re-skein the blank yarn into extremely long skeins - this weekend ours ranged from 30-45 feet around - in order to get long enough sections to form a stripe. I always remember this when I see people complaining about the price of hand dyed self-striping yarn. They probably don't realize how much work goes into it!

After running in circles around Stephania's basement, we put on the dye. I dyed three skeins - two and three color striped skeins with equal stripes, a three color that has long blue/short grey/long purple/short grey, and dyed half of an existing skein of yarn black to make it into a striping skein. Then we rinsed the yarn and hung it to dry.

Since I had to bring mine back home, it's been hanging from the backs of two chairs across my living room and down the hallway since Sunday night.

Tonight it was really and truly dry (yes, Seattle is a fairly moist climate) so I wound it up. This required running in circles once again, this time with my ball winder. But the end result is lovely!



I have decided yet if I'm going to reskein it or not. Now that it's all wound it balls it seems kind of silly, but if I'm going to be storing it a while, it might not be a bad idea.