Camp Stitches Santa Fe

Last week I went to Camp Stitches in Santa Fe, NM. It was simply wonderful. We went to 6 yarn stores and many of the lovely shops in Santa Fe. We had 2 days to shop, and 2.5 days of class. The food was good, the students and teachers were fun, and my class was great. I plan on doing much less at Stitches West so I can go to camp next year.

We arrived in Albuquerque, NM on Wed. and all met in the airport. At 5p, the bus took us to Village Wools. This is an awesome shop. It is huge and had a large classroom set up with 6 or 7 looms and a bigger classroom, where they had a wonder buffet for us. Then there was the store. It had 4 large sections, which had yarn, yarn, and more yarn, a sitting area with books, an area with dyes and spinning tools, and a yarn sales section. They gave us a map of the store when we entered, it was that big. It was a fiber artist HEAVEN. At 8p we got on the bus and were taken to our Lodge in Santa Fe.

This is the view from my room. This was the first day, Thursday, which was overcast with light rain. Patti Hathaway had a car and I went with her a Ginger to visit the five yarn shops in Santa Fe.

We went to:

Oodles Yarn & Bead Gallery
I bought this button and a Karabella pattern.

TuToo
A new store that had opened two days before. I loved this store because it has several yarns I'd never seen and the light was wonderful. I didn't buy anything on Thurs. but went back on Sat. and bought Jamieson's Shetland Heather for the pattern I'd bought at Oodles.

Needle's Eye
Where I bought these really great buttons.

Miriam Wells - School of Weaving
Where I bought Fiesta Boomerang (a brand new yarn from Fiesta)

Looking Glass Yarns
Where I bought a 3" wood crochet hook in a case. Perfect for grabbing just one dropped stitch.

The class I took was Creative Colors and Closures by Ellen and Carol of Ellen's Half Pint Farms. It was 1/2 a day of dyeing, 1 full day of making polymer clay buttons, and a full day of whatever you wanted to do.

This is the extra yarn Ellen brought all lined up against a wall, which you could purchase and dye. There was

- fingering superwash 100% merino

- fingering superwash merino/bamboo 50/50

- fingering superwash merino/tencel 50/50

- DK merino/silk 50/50

- DK 100% alpaca

- superwash worsted 100% merino

- lace baby alpaca/silk 80/20

Ellen gave us 4 skeins for superwash merino sock yarn, 1 skein of baby alpaca/silk, 1 skein of mohair, and one silk hankie, which when pulled apart will be about 45 pieces. We started with the superwash because you could handle it more roughly without worrying about felting it. She gave us the other fibers so we could learn how different fibers take dye.

This is the dye mixing table. Ellen did all the mixing. We started using small paint brushes but later could use large brushes, squirt bottles or even just pour the dye on. She used Country Classics dye.

Here is Patti by the dye pot. Notice the toaster oven under the table. That is for baking the buttons.

Here is Cassandra dyeing her yarn. The skein to her right, is the yarn Judy Pascal was working on. Don't you just LOVE the design she created!

This Camp was the best. Have you ever gone to a class, where the cocktail waitress stopped by. Boy or boy Class and Cocktails. This is the life! She brought soft drinks too. But many in the class got into the spirit(s) LOL [pun intended]

Here is the result of first day of dyeing. My skeins are the first on the far right.

These are some of the buttons we made the second day.

The first day we dyed 4 skeins of superwash merino sock yarn.

For the first skein, we were given 3 primary colors; red, yellow, and blue. When I started with the 3 primary colors, I just applied them in order blue, red, yellow. But after two sections, I realized that if I didn't put the yellow next to the blue, I wouldn't get green. So for the rest of the skein, I used a blue, red, yellow, red pattern. It came out really well, but there were two spots that were green and two spots that were bright yellow. On the last day, I overdyed these areas adding a bit of red on the bright yellow spots and more blue on the green spots. And it fixed everything! Woo Hoo.

Skein two we were told to take out one primary color and darken one color. Ellen gave us some black dye. I removed the yellow. And instead of using the black, I added blue to the red and red to the blue.

Skein three we were to pick 3 colors of our own. I choose Aqua, Apricot, and Purple. I made discreet color blocks and did not blend these colors.

Skein four we were to add a color. I used the Aqua, Apricot, and Purple and added a Blue Spruce. I did blend these colors a bit.

After that we got to do what we wanted. Next I dyed my silk hankie using the Aqua, Apricot, and Purple. I'm in love with this colorway. Can't wait to see the swatch.

Then I dyed the alpaca/silk. I used aqua and purple. First I mixed the two colors to get periwinkle and dyed the skein making it semisolid. Then I lightly painted sections of aqua and purple over some of the yarn.

The mohair was interesting to dye. I used magenta and raspberry. I painted alternating boxes with these colors with a big dot of one of the colors in the center of the box leaving white around the dot. I was hoping for a mix of dark and light red-violet with small patches of white. What happened was in the dye pot, because mohair doesn't absorb liquid very well, most of the dye just seeped through to the bottom and I ended up with the bottom being dark and the top being light. There is a tiny bit of white is 2 or 3 places. I learned a lot from this. I really love the color and it will work well with the 2 color primary skein.

For my handspun, I decided to try and use colors I don't normally like. I used yellow and red and was trying for a sunset colorway. I looked at it and it needed something. Ellen suggested a tiny bit of black. So I put a few very small stripes of black. My hand spun was thick and I used too much red and yellow when trying to get the dye into all the yarn. So the yarn was quite wet and in the dye pot the black really spread. I'm not in love with this but seeing how color will spread was probably the most important lesson I learned. I'll use this for a felted bag and add another color to help blend the colors.

One of the most interesting things I learned at camp, was Ellen said that you could tell generally how everyone was feeling by the colors that sold. After 911, they sold lots of blues and browns. Soft mutted colors. This year yellow and red are popular. I thought it was interesting and probably true.