....using what's at hand....

....driving to the studio today along our exquisite lakeshore drive....and as I looked at the way spring is unfolding, near water and elsewhere, it came over me that, if I only could become a technically proficient yarn dyer (not Laura Bryant, not Ellen Minand, but at least competent), I could work to develop a sock yarn line that would be keyed to particular local vistas and vignettes of particularly striking beauty.  This will be a trick.  All I have done, really, is to overdye some natural grays and browns, and then kettle dye some of Green Mountain Spinnery's nice medium-weight natural wool.   Of course I've sat through a dyeing workshop with Ellen, and I've read the requisite books.  But that's not how one learns about dyeing and color.  So maybe I'll start with one vignette and see how I do.  I won't want to sell yarn that isn't done properly.

The idea here, though, is pretty wonderful:   Larry or I would take some photographs of riveting moments along the lakeshore and elsewhere -- he would reproduce the photographs (or at least the best and most telling one) on a yarn band, and we'd call the series something like Water and Earth by Artisan Knitworks -- he can come up with something more elegant than that.  And it will take me the summer to figure out if I can do this.  If not, then not.  Two friends promised today to tell me if the things I turn out are not up to snuff.

Or maybe, like the mama spider, I can lure someone over here to help!  I have in mind the brilliant Nancy McRay from Woven Art in East Lansing, whose parting shot was that she might try to come visit someday soon.  I can easily envision a dyeing workshop......  Failing that, or perhaps in addition to that, I could ask friends at Lorna's Laces in Chicago if I can drive over there and watch for a day or two.  (For Laura:  Florida is too far away!!!!!   And I don't think I can dip-dye.  This has to be done with poured dye and brushes, etc.).

The first vignette -- it almost made me cry to see it -- will involve some willows covered with brilliant, almost neon baby green (the color of what?  maybe a cross between lemon and lime, though it's not that either -- it has some gold in it -- close to Classic Colors' golden pear) with some other greens, draped over water that shimmered with blues and grays, and then of course a shot of deep, deep yellow from a patch of daffs newly sprung from the trap of winter.........We'll see.  This idea has appeal to me, but everything depends on technical competence.      svb