I’m getting ready for a seven week, cross country road trip. Which means two things: first, I won’t be posting here for about 8-10 weeks and second, that I’m searching for cool/great/wonderful/fun yarn stores all over the US.If you really love my posts (doesn’t everyone?) email me directly and I’ll give you the URL and password to my travel blog. The kids and I will be posting daily and putting up pictures of our big adventure there.If you want to know how I’m finding cool yarn stores, go to KnitMap and query your favorite city. My fav place, Unique One, is listed there and has some good reviews–go write your own. On my trip I hope to visit a few stores. If you know of one that carries unique or local yarns, drop me a line. My trip starts 2/15 and goes until 4/1 and we’ll be traveling through: Maine, D.C., Knoxville, Atlanta, Jackson, MS, Texas, Phoenix, LA, Bakersfield, SLO, Monterey, SF bay area, Oregon, Seattle, Butte, MT, Minneapolis, MN, Cleveland, OH and back home again. Happy knitting!

Not that long past, but is was two summers ago. My friend PJ (whose backyard was used for this experiment) forwarded this picture to me yesterday.

I have since then I’ve found better ways to dye sock yarn in stripes, but this was fun (though a bit hot).

On the warmest day of the year in Maine–I’m from the desert; it NEVER gets hot here–I pulled out PJ’s utility table and set it up under a tree. I used my warping pegs to lay out the yarn. I had made the warp pegs back when I considered weaving (that was a short experiment). I took giant nails (they are about 8″ long and as thick as my little finger), and put two through a 5″x10″ 1″ thick board. I then used c-clamps to attach them to the table.

I covered the table with plastic wrap (I use a LOT of plastic wrap when I dye) and then wound the yarn like a warp. Then I painted the yarn using my favorite colors: Jaquard’s Hot Fuschia and turquoise, some bright blue and a bit of navy. I did some interesting things like tying cotton string every 1/2 inch before using the fuschia dye to try to get a fair isle effect (it didn’t work well).

Here are the socks (you may have seen them last year):

When I was done painting the yarn, I wrapped everything up in the plastic wrap and steamed the whole mess. I like the way it came out, but it was a lot more work than I planned on it being.

Next time I’ll use a shorter warp–I’ve figured out how to get what I want without walking 15 miles to do it.