This is special yarn because it came from my dear golden retriever Candy. It was spun for me by Victoria at VIP Fibers in Texas. After several months of brushing and collecting the fur, which Candy willingly obliged us, I sent a large Ziploc bag of fur to VIP. I received my yarn in about 8 weeks. The large bag weighed in at 6 ounces, which became 300 yds of sport weight genuine golden retriever yarn. They even made cute little labels with Candy's picture on them. In case you're wondering, it doesn't smell doggy at all.
Also here is some yarn from a friend's two Shiloh shepherds (and the reason I initiated this business in the first place). She had asked me to spin her dogs' fur, since she doesn't spin, and after receiving it, I hadn't a clue as to how to deal with these short fibers of different consistencies. So I located these kind folks at VIP, and it worked out well all around. I think hers turned out even better than mine, because it's so tweedy looking and a beautiful gray. It yielded just 75 yards, but it will surely make something nice, such as a fair isle motif on a pair of mittens.
Having your dog's hair spun is a good idea if you would like a keepsake of a precious pet, especially an ailing pet, as was knit blogger Gelsomina's dog Friday (scroll down to Nov. 17, 2006 entry). Candy is only 8 years old and fit as a fiddle, but I'm happy to have this special yarn with me even now.
Saturday was spent at a Brandon Mably workshop at McMenamins Kennedy School in Portland. The workshop was titled "Color and Design", the point of which was to expand the participants' ideas of color in order to make our knitting designs more interesting. We spent the workshop exploring Kaffe Fassett's Persian Poppy design. Below is my swatch, which was about a foot long by the end of class time.
To begin, everyone put the yarn they had brought in the center of the table and made two piles, one of dark and one of light colors. There were 40 of us, so we had 5 tables of 8 each. We each cut small lengths of yarns we liked and made our own balls of about 6 different yarns to get started, one dark ball and one light ball. Then we knit up the poppy pattern and watched what developed. Although Brandon said we should not rip out, we could cut out a color we were knitting with if we didn't like what it was doing in our swatch. Here's one of the bright tables of yarn.
At the end of the class, Brandon did a critique of our work. He loved the many interpretations of this pattern, and I thought it was really neat, too. Mine is the one at far right behind Brandon's shoulder.
Brandon is a seasoned veteran of the knitting workshop. He's got a dry sense of humor and his criticisms were tempered by his obvious enthusiasm and joy for colorwork. He truly has a sixth sense for color, but says he just learned it by doing. That's me with him below, looking like a black crow next to a colorful bird of some sort!
He had some beautiful samples that I did not take pictures of, unfortunately. His Persian Poppy scarf done in 4-ply was so gorgeous I might have to start one of my own.
