Yesterday was the last Common Cod meeting of the year (the year runs from September to July with meetings on the odd numbered months). Barbara Parry was talking about color inspiration and bit into the technicalities of how she visually selects colors from her environment. It was much like a woolly Georgia O'Keeffe. Barbara takes pictures of the world around her, mostly on her farm, and then crops them and blows up elements and selects colors from that section. It's a gross oversimplification of her technique.
Afterwards, she was signing books and selling yarn. I'd done the koolaid and the wilton dying before, but I don't really have the space to do dying on a regular basis or the desire to get even a few large cheap pots (so I can keep dying separate from cooking). The only dye method that she mentioned that was really interesting to me is solar dying, and I can try that when summer really gets here with some good sized mason jars.
I bought yarn. Her yarn line, Foxfire Fiber, is super duper soft. She has two (to me) main color groups: pastels and the richer, more saturated jewel tones.
I bought this yarn, sort of: I actually got the wool-alpaca blend, which is a much fuller color than the cormo-silk blend at the right. Without the silk, the yarn doesn't have the sheen and just soaks up the color. i have 4 skeins of loon, a rich teal blue-green.
I'm thinking of making a cropped vest, like the Portland Tweed Vest. My 4 skeins have a slightly larger yardage than the yarn called for, but are fairly close to the same yarn weight.
In completely unrelated news, I got home to find out that I had rehung the bag with my cross-stitch in it, so Saru-chan did not get an opportunity during the day to snag the nearly finished project. Must finish the stitching first, before starting anything else!
