I’m a Happy Camper

Are you ready to change the way you think about spinning with color?  Do you have fun when combining colors or is it just a mess of stress? Are you ready for spinning with color to be fun?

Do you have a collection of beautiful braids in colors you love, but haven’t cracked them open because you’re not sure how to spin them without bungling the colors?

In this class, we’ll throw out the color wheel and learn to work with dyed fiber in a bunch of stress-free ways.

You’ll spend the class spinning and knitting yarns from beautifully dyed variegated fibers.

You’ll explore several different ways to work with spinning variegated fibers into yarn you’ll love to knit with.

You’ll get tips on the how to work with different breeds and fiber blends when combining tops and rovings.

You’ll work with drafting, plies, marls and fractals, and spin and knit samples that you can refer to after class is over.

You’ll learn how to keep colors as they are, how to blend colors for depth and subtlety, and how to combine colors, all without breaking a sweat.

Most importantly, you’ll walk away from this class with more spinning confidence, knowing you don’t need a degree in art or even a color wheel to create beautiful, colorful yarn.

Please bring to class: a wheel in good working order, at least 3 bobbins, a lazy kate and a niddy noddy, knitting needles, paper tags

Please be able to: to spin a consistent yarn and know how to adjust your wheel

Doesn’t that sound like a load of fun? I can’t take it though because I’ll be teaching so somebody will have to fill me in.

And also Rita! Rita Petteys is the owner of Yarn Hollow. She is one of the best dyers I know with a fantastic color sense and she wants to tell you how she does it. Rita is also the chair person for the Spinzilla contest. Rita is going to teach you how to dye those rovings and tops. Here’s how she describes it:

Are you looking for some techniques to make sure what you dye comes out light, fluffy, and spinnable? Do you want to know how to choose colors in your dyeing that will result in saturated, bright color combinations that will work well together in a variety of techniques?

Are you new to dyeing? Have you dyed on spinning fiber before but haven’t been as pleased with the results as you had hoped? Are you sometimes stymied picking colors, afraid that what you pick will result in mud? Or have you dyed fiber and the results weren’t what you wanted.

In this class, we will discuss:

• Sure-fire techniques to help you hone your color choices for the results you want
• Tips on dyeing fiber that will result in super-soft, spinnable fibers
• Ways to lay out fiber for particular results, from gradation techniques, short repeats of fiber for fractal spinning and plying, and others
• How to lay out colors in such a way to blend color, separate color into distinct areas, and how to prevent unwanted colors

Take aways from the class will be two 4-ounce braids that you have dyed, a handout about dyeing fibers, the possibility to take additional materials with you to experiment at home, and information that will flow into the two other classes at the retreat!

I look forward to meeting you and dyeing with you and hope that this class will fire up your creativity!

See? You want to come don’t you? You can sign up here. Feel free to read the other site pages too if you want:-)

Here’s the thing. we need to know if you are coming by this coming Friday, the 19th. If you sign up by Friday and then we are going to enter you into a giant drawing. The drawing is for $300 worth of stuff.  Here’s the list:

• $100 worth of Yarn Hollow dyed fiber in fantastic colors. (She has more than is showing but she sells it so fast the website can’t keep up)
• A Super Fiber Sampler from the Spinning Loft as well as the In Sheeps Clothing Book that I talked about in the last post.
• And finally Jillian is throwing is in the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook along with the new book by Sarah Anderson called the Spinner’s Book of Yarn Design.

So there you go. Sign up for a fun retreat before the end of the day on Friday and get a chance to win a giant load of fantastic stuff!

Need the Website again? HappyCamperFiber.com