Dyeing Workshop - Widdershins Style

Ani is here!  Living at the edge of the continent, we don't have the biggest, most frequently used airports and so our flights in and out tend to happen at odd hours.  However, I deliberately booked Ani's flight to arrive at a reasonable hour.  The day before she left, I saw that they had changed her itinerary so that she would now arrive at midnight.  It isn't the late (or very early) hour that makes it so irritating but the fact that it means driving at a time when moose are likely to be on the roads.  As it turned out, it almost didn't matter because her plane was so late that the sun was just about coming up by the time we reached home.  Welcome to Newfoundland!  We made up for all that the next day by having a delicious lunch at Corner Brook's only sushi place.  If you are thinking that Corner Brook and sushi are a very odd combination, I won't argue with you but somehow, some way, they are doing it right.  We felt much better.

Then we settled in and got to work.  We had eight participants.  Eight LUCKY participants.  Ani did not hold back in sharing all her experience and knowledge from decades of working with wool.  As she said, it isn't possible for anyone to copy her because we all have our own ways of doing things so there is no reason not to be generous with information.  And so it proved to be - everyone did their own thing.

And what a thing it was!

This is Eleanor - a loaner cat from our friend Olive who has been keeping mice out of the kitchen this summer.  She supervised the workshop in a quiet, but insistent, way.  Thanks Eleanor!

Not surprisingly, colour was king at this workshop.  Everyone played with mixing colours and the surprises as each roving was unwrapped never got old.  It was impossible to know what would emerge so there was a magical feeling each time.

The magic didn't stop with the dyeing.  I took one unclaimed roving that was nice but not especially fabulous.  But look!  That is a beautiful yarn.  And it looked even more lovely - and yet different again - when I knit it up.

It was a glorious weekend.  Thank you Ani for everything!