Pictures below. Lots of pictures. We had great fun having a natural dye party at Patrice’s. Total of 11 people. Not everyone was into natural dyeing. We had knitting and spinning going on. Lovely conversations. And so relaxing. It’s been so busy for me lately that I really needed it.
Mariko brought tons of stuff. Plants, dye stock, pots, food and wine. Most of us also brought food to contribute to the potluck. Everything was delicious. Espeically Mariko’s salmon, which was grilled on the spot. She also made Japanese rice balls filled with picled cucumbers and wrapped in sheets of seaweed. I always wanted to try one of those. It was delicious! Helene’s couscous was fantastic too. She even packed some for me to take home.
Treating the fiber with different mordant.
Separating the flowers and the stems of the dahlias for different dye stock.
A toast to the veterans on Veteran’s Day.
John showed us his beautiful hand-spun, hand-dyed and handwoven pancho. The picture really doesn’t do it justice. I hope he will teach a class on making something like this. I would be the first one to sign up!
I missed most of the conversations. I was running taking pictures.
Kim getting a spinning lesson from Nancy.
Yup!
Lynn showed us her own design. She explained how she knitted it. If you look closely you’d see that it’s not plain knitting back and forth in a straight line. I don’t know how to explain it.
Jill’s beautiful hand-spun jewel-tone yarn. It’s really quite breath-taking.
This here is a pot of beautiful magenta dye stock. I always heard that natural dyeing stinks. I walked up to it. Leaned forward and took a whiff of it. “It’s not that bad. Kind of nice.” “What is it?” I asked. “It’s bugs,” said Patrice. “OH!” Slowly backing away. “How interesting!” They had prepared the dye stock the night before with ground cochineal insects. Did you think it was the dahlias? 
Nap time!
Some of the experiment results.
And of course, we needed a group picture with the yarn.
Oh, click on any picture to go to my Flickr album for a larger view. There are more pictures in there too.
