Tracy came to visit this weekend so we could work on the Secret Project.  Here it is. 

Warning: this is a picture heavy post.

We started with approximately 7000 yards of undyed yarn. 

We put the yarn into 450 yard skeins.

As you can see, our set up was extremely low tech.  Ghetto even.  Once we had the yarn in skeins, we moved to the "dye studio".  I have to say, my husband is a fantastic man.  He let me set this up in the laundry room and has never once mentioned that I need to put the laundry room back into order.  He’s letting me keep this as a dye space.

We did all of the work down here.  Once the yarn was dyed, we carried it upstairs in a bucket to use the stove to steam set the dye.

You’re ready to see the finished projects though, aren’t you?

First, after everything was steamed, cooled, rinsed with water, and then given a Eucalan bath, we dryed the skeins on a sweater rack out on the deck.

If you look at the rack, on the far left, there is a dark skein.  Navy, purple and black.  That’s Mothman.  Somehow, I never got a finished picture of it before Tracy took it home with her.

Okay, now for finished skeins.

Dreamland before reskeining.

Dreamland after reskeining.

Ritter Park before reskeining.

Ritter Park after reskeining.

That’s it for reskeined yarn.  Reskeining takes a helluva lot of time and energy.  I should mention that the pink stripey yarn you see in those skeins are the ties we used to keep the skein together and orderly.  One thing we learned, it’s much easier to use a contrast yarn to tie skeins together than the same yarn that you’re dying.   Otherwise, things get all confused and tangly.

Jewel City.

Scary Holler.

Another note, Jewel City and Scary Holler were dyed using a kettle dye technique.  Everything else was handpainted.

The Initial Tree.

Pawpaw’s Plum Tree.

Tamarack.

Thundering Herd.

Yum Yum Shoppe.

Crap in a Basement.

Crap in a Basement is not a full 450 yards.  I think it’s 275 yards.  It was the last off the cone and we used all the leftover dye we had from that day.  Hence the name Crap in a Basement.

Oh, colorway names.  All of the colorway names come from something in our hometown or a memory from childhood.  I could give an explanation for each one, but I think this post is long enough.  If you ask real nice, I’ll explain them in another post.

So, that’s it.  A huge addition to our stashes.  450 yard skeins of 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon fingering weight.  I’m going to be dying again soon.  I still have quite a bit of dye to use.  It was a lot of work but so much fun.  We also learned a lot and have some tweaking to do.  As you can see, Tamarack is already wound into a ball.  I’m going to be casting on for a pair of Monkey socks tonight. 

Hmmm, I guess I should ask.  What do you think?  What would you like to see in handpainted yarns?  More sock yarn?  Laceweight?  Worsted weight?  No particular reason why I’m asking.  Nope, none at all.