Dying Day! at Blue Moon Fiber Arts

Hello:  This photo was yesterday's sunset.  Don't be fooled by the bit of clouds.  There was no relief from the sun today.  We are having a heat wave with a heat advisory for the weekend.  The high today was 31.1 (88 F).  Ok, I know that doesn't seem super high to some of you, but for us, it is HOT.

The heat didn't bother me today, though, because I left Bellevue at 8:30 am with 4 of my Eastside Stitchers Buddies and drove down to Scappoose, Oregon, for Dying Day at Blue Moon Fiber Arts Studio.




It's about a 3 hour drive.  Our time on the dying tables was 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm.  We left early because we knew we would need time to choose our bases, and perhaps do a bit of shopping in the yarn that was on sale.  Also, we had a chance to sit in the shady yard behind the dying studio and eat our lunches before we got to work.

Wajio drove, and JitteryKnitter, JulieMustKnit, Truespark and I were able to knit knit on the way down.  In no time (ok, about 3 hours)  we were driving across the Columbia River and in Oregon.

We drove through some beautiful woods, and up to the studio.  We knew we  had arrived at the right place when we saw the giant bins of yarn out in front.

Inside the studio, the group who had the time before ours. was hard at work.

All around the studio were the most beautiful skeins of dyed yarns.

We choose our bases and any roving we wanted to dye.

I chose some BFL fingering weight yarn, and also some roving to spin myself later.
When it was our turn to dye, we covered our tables with plastic wrap

laid out our wet yarn (the nice workers had pre-soaked it for us while we ate our lunch)

and got to work with the dye bottles.

Playing with color was so much fun!

We squirted a vinegar/water mixture onto the dyed fibers to fix the dye, wrapped them up

Then they were brought out back to the steamers to heat up.

There was an indigo dye vat out back, and Wajio dyed some T shirts.

My yarn is still drying. I hope to get some photos of the finished products up tomorrow.

On the way home we stopped at Burgerville in St. Helens, Oregon for Raspberry Shakes. 

As we drove back North, to Washington, we passed STP (Seattle to Portland) Riders.  We cheered as they rode by.

Amazingly fun day.

Peace,
f1bercat
shaping the planet with dyed yarn.