New Class, New Project!

I enjoy taking classes.  Yes, this includes college and grad school classes, but those days are behind me now.  The classes I mostly take now are craft classes. 

I'm a bit of an ADD crafter.  Everything seems like a good idea when I am standing in the hobby store.  Mostly I find this to be expensive, but there are some definite bonuses to being this way.  Like I took a class on making Chain Maille jewelry and have a container of the supplies in my craft room, which means I can make my own stitch markers whenever I want and in whatever color I want/need.  And my own stitchmarkers are much cheaper than what I would buy in the store.

But so far I have had very good luck with classes and learning new crafts.  Once you start branching out on the craft spectrum, there is actually a lot of overlap.  I have quilted since I was 12, so piecing together my own stained glass patterns was no problem at all for me.  When I wanted to learn colorwork, I tried the YouTube route (I am overwhelmingly a visual learner) but still couldn't quite get it right.  So I took a class in it and now am in love with stranded colorwork.  I have heard that some people have trouble picking colors, but after years of quilting, sewing, and knitting I don't really.  

The newest class I took on is two-fold.  It is dedicated to teaching the process of dyeing yarn and then lacework.  I am pretty interested in dyeing, since I love color in my knitting.  I also am intrigued by lace knitting, though it's a tough sell for me.  I am not, in general, a lacy person and I don't think I have ever worn a fashion scarf or shawl in my life.  I like them, but dedicating the time to making something I know I won't use is tough.  But lace patterns and the things they produce always look so pretty, so I thought I would give it a shot.  I just need to find someone to give the finished product to.

Anyway, I dyed the yarn last week and it is now dry and ready to wind for use.  The process itself was pretty easy (prep yarn, apply dye, heat-set dye, rinse and cool).  My only wish was that I had thought out my colors a bit more before I started dyeing, but this is all pretty new to me so I basically just hope the yarn looks OK knitted up.  I dyed two hanks, one lace-weight and one fingering that I plan to use for lacy socks.  The lace weight is on the right and the fingering is on the left.  I decided that I will make a scarf and it will be out of the yellow-orange-green laceweight for my mom.  We'll see how this goes.