Drunken Dye Party

Exactly one week ago, I spent the day at the Verdant Gryphon dye studio in Easton, MD. As I’ve mentioned, Verdant Gryphon is one of my all-time favorite dyers, and to be invited to hang out and dye yarn with them was majorly exciting.

I drove down Thursday afternoon. Let me tell you, when you cross the border from Delaware into Maryland, it is RURAL. Being used to living in New Jersey, the most densely populated state, where I can practically hold hands with my neighbor out our windows, it’s a bit mind-warping to drive for 20 miles without seeing a single house. Or person.

Anyway, the town of Easton is cute, but hard to navigate when you’re looking for your car at night because you can’t remember where you parked it. Isn’t there an app for that?

Around lunchtime on Friday, Gryphon picked me up and we got lunch to bring back to the studio. The studio is HUGE.

I met Gryphon’s daughter Lia (now going by her middle name, Sappho), Leigh-Anne, Steve, Rachel and Jamie, who were all really sweet. Here are Steve and Leigh-Anne:

We had lunch and commenced to drinking (we sampled all the cocktail club drinks and you club members are in for a treat)…

and then Ann Weaver showed up!

I’d been wanting to try dyeing yarn for a while, but never quite got it up to gather up all the right equipment and resign myself to making a huge mess, so this was the most perfect environment to experiment. As promised, the elves showed me what was what, I watched them for a bit, and then set about my own dyepots. I’M ADDICTED. I’m trying to talk my housemates into letting me turn the back deck into a dye studio.

I will say, though, that dyeing is a pretty simple process, but it’s not easy to get good results. In my opinion, all the yarn I dyed kind of looked like a first attempt, but I learned a lot along the way and I was totally not ready to quit by dinnertime.

Still, dyeing is hungry work and late in the day, we caravanned over to Leigh-Anne’s house where her lovely husband was making Cornish game hens. Her house is beautiful. And there are chickens!

Dinner was delicious enough to make me forgive them for having a dog named Toby (seriously, you wouldn’t believe how many dogs are named Toby…and how many of those dogs are male). By the time I got back to my motel room, I was thoroughly exhausted, but it was a GREAT day.

I didn’t take that many pictures because I always get so involved in things that I forget, but luckily, Jamie took a bunch and they’re better than any I took or would have taken. You can see them on facebook here.

My yarn wasn’t totally dry by the time I got home on Saturday, and here’s a picture of it all hanging in my bathroom:

I’m looking forward to seeing whose doorsteps they show up on!