A Good Day to Dye

Getting my indigo on!

Yupp, yesterday I went back to dye class.  I decided that summer was the perfect time to go back so that the kids and I could get a break from each other every week, and it would get me out of the house.

The ladies welcomed me back with open arms, which made me feel great.  As we were talking about my hiatus, one of them referred to the class as "[her] therapy", and I think that's a pretty good way for me to think about it.

• A whole semester of four-hour classes costs less than the average price of a therapy session.
• Buying extra supplies (plus the $25 supply fee) doesn't equal the cost of a second therapy session.
• It gets me out of the house.
• I make friends.
• It lets me play with another way to be creative and gives me something new to learn.
• I end up with many Christmas/birthday gifts for folks by the end of the session.

Indeed, it's worth every penny invested.

My "parfait dyeing" results

OK, per the Knitmores' "Three Bites Rule", I have now reached a verdict:  I really don't like the results of parfait dyeing.  The next time the teacher says we're going to do it, I will politely bow out.  The only one of these I'm even sort of pleased with is the red one.

As you can see, the indigo pot was kinder to me than the parfait bucket was.

These two smaller skeins will probably be part of a gift
for my friend's daughter, who recently took up knitting.

I attempted a white-grey-black gradient that ended up more dark black-slightly lighter black.  The purple skeins were dyed in longwood.

I also dyed a sock blank in the longwood, but was displeased with the resulting color, so I plopped it in a citric acid bath, which gave a weird, muddy brown with a couple of spots of purple.  No worries, though; next week, I'll put some stripes/splotches of another color or two, and I'll show it to you when it's "done".