Spiders Day o' Yarn Dyeing Fun!

I owe a HUGE thank you to Marie of Brooklyn Handspun for inviting me to the Spiders Knit yarn dyeing day she hosted at her beautiful, spacious, gorgeous, adult, apartment of which I am not even the slightest jealous no siree bob. Anyhoo, Marie is a professional fiber artist who spins and dyes her own beautiful stuff, and she had nearly TWENTY amateurs at hear place for about 10 hours yesterday dyeing yarn in her kitchen. She fed us and liquored us up and allowed us to plop down in front of her TV for hours at a time, watching super bad movies (okay, the last one isn't so bad). She reacted calmly when Amanda accidentally became locked in the bathroom and it took the tipsy Spiders about 15 minutes to pick the lock and let her out. Well, actually it was Stephanie, who didn't seem tipsy at all, about three seconds and a sharp knife to do it, but she didn't jump in until later in the process. She even remained zen when a second person locked themselves in the bathroom immediately after that. (about 10 people photographed this entire process, so I'm sure the whole hilarious incident will be on the Internets sooner or later). But most of all, Marie had us there for like TEN HOURS. Bless her heart.

It was tons of fun hanging out with the Spiders, including several folks whose blogs I've read and who comment here, but whom I've never met in person. Plus all that waiting yielded lots of knitting time, so I imagine there will be a zillion progress shots after today. Birch, for one, has recovered all her lost ground and is now the same size she was when I frogged her.

But most importantly, a million hand-dyed skeins of yarn bloomed as a result of the day. Marie introduced us to industrial dyes, which let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, is a big step up from Kool-Aid dyeing and, in the end, more cost-effective if you do enough dyeing. I dyed just under two balls of thirsty superwash Dalegarn Baby Ull, leftover from the Norwegian Stockings. My vision was a squash-brown-teal combo, and I got closer than I usually do with these things. I love love love the colorway... it's very... a sunset somewhere I've never, ever been:

But since it's impossible for any of my yarn-dyeing endeavors to go without a hitch, there's a problem. The skein is INCREDIBLY badly tangled, because I didn't tie it off correctly. You can see the big old tangle there on the left hand side of the skein. So it may eventually become something if I can work up the patience to ball it up, or it may just sit in the stash and look pretty.

Anyway, I didn't bring my camera but I'm sure plenty of pictures will be showing up on the blogs of the many attendees soon! Thank you again, Marie, and all you Spiders for a super fun day!