It’s All About Color

It’s funny. My friends are always teasing me about how I love to spin white yarn. It’s true, I do, but I didn’t realize how true until I sat down to write this post and realized how few photos I have with colored yarn in them. In my defense I have spent the last few years focusing on raw fleece and there are very few orange sheep.

Anyway, the point is this. This September Jillian Moreno, Rita Petteys and I are hosting a retreat right here in Michigan. It’s all about color.

Jillian is teaching Color Play: Stress-free Ways to Spin With Color – Variegated Tops and Rovings

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.

Rita is teaching Dyeing Harmonious Color Combinations on Spinning Fiber

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!

And I am teaching Hand Carding the Color Wheel

It’s all about getting the perfect color. We can do that simply with a little fiber and a pair of hand cards. We will begin with just the primary colors and black and white. We will learn how to adjust and blend just the right amount of these colors to make a wide range of colors for your projects.

You will leave the class with more faith in your ability to use hand cards as well as a knowledge of how to blend colors consistently for even the largest of projects.

As you can see, these classes are inspiring and I think very exciting. Plus you don’t have to decide! Everybody gets to take every class!

On top of it all we will be staying in this lovely house by a lake. The location is peaceful and beautiful.

If you want more information about the retreat you can check it out at the Happy Camper website. There are very few spaces so think about it and get back to us.