My Own Hand-Painted Yarn!

I took my first crafty type of class in years and years and years these past two weeks. Usually I just buy a book and figure it out for myself, but this time I decided a little company would be fun. The local LYS ( I know, I know, how redundant, but somehow local YS just doesn't do the job) offered a handpainting class and I signed up. The summer class schedule came on Saturday, I enrolled on Monday morning and the class was almost full already. And, the LYS is closed on Sunday! Handpainting must be popular!

The class was a lot of fun. The teacher kept us on track and moving right along. As a former classroom teacher, she had her lesson plan prepared, a great visual handout, and materials ready.
We dyed two types of sock yarn and left the second class with yarn ready to go. In the picture, my variegated yarn is on the left and self-striping on the right. The rose is peach, for color reference. The actual yarns are not so electric. I need help figuring out how to take more accurate color pictures! I guess I'll have to read the camera's manual (again!).

But, back to the yarn- I love self-striping yarn. Absolutely love it. Though, come to think of it, I rarely knit it plainly enough for it to just stripe. I've designed several sock patterns and am presently working on a beret pattern (needs me to figure out how to graft in pattern) in Opal self-striping. I can't wait to work up swatches with this yarn! I've already had the stitch dictionaries out looking for possibilities. I kind of think I've found one, but not in the dictionaries, in a British thinking about your knitting kind of book. We'll see if I can adapt it and what it looks like in the swatch. Probably socks, but I'm also wondering about the dyeing repeats and sweater patterns. So Much Fun!



Scout's warping board - used to measure out the repeats for the self-striping yarn.