Dyeing in Suffolk

There's only so many times that you can take almost-identical pictures of stoles/wraps which are becoming fractionally longer every day... (but they're on track. A night knitting at I Knit tomorrow night should get me within distant sight of the finishing line for the Hypoteneuse, and the Mystic Meadows is 11/16ths finished (and there's one chart in the last 5 which is only about a third the size of the others. This is just as well as, fiendishly, there's an every-row-patterned element coming through in the next chart which usually defeats me completely if some of the patterning is on the reverse, which in this case, being a stole, it is...)

... and I realised I'd completely forgotten to post pictures of the Natural Dye Studio's open weekend at the end of July (Heather [sparkleduck] and Michael were going and very kindly gave me a lift and found a lovely pub for lunch - they're the two somewhat ghostly figures on the left of this picture). Here's Amanda telling us about the vats - she dyes a kilo of yarn at a time, and does one colour and leaves it to dry before dipping it in another. Really, really interesting; and the amount of care it takes to get the vats right is amazing; but she also balances that with a certain jaunty élan when actually dipping the stuff...

Jeni from Fyberspates then gave us a bit of a talk on her methods, too, and then a demo - again, fascinating. I've been buying sponge-brushes for years, and Jeni just uses paintbrushes and it works just as well - I'll be down at Wilko's as soon as enough of my spongey ones fall apart... It was good to see someone who uses the same type of dye doing things in a different way and it looking fabulous.

It was a lovely afternoon; highly recommended...