A Perfect Road Trip! Part 2 - Destination Wool!

The original inspiration for this trip was the announcement of a 3-day fiber arts workshop in Fort Collins, Colorado. This event was created and hosted by Tedi Jansen and Toot Gradisar. Well, Toot is a woodworker and helped us make fiber-related tools. There were several guest instructors and many workshops to choose from. I decided on wet felting, botanical dying, and blue (and green) dying. The workshops were in their barn, which doubles as their house. No problem with the heat except for my fridge chest! They also raise Finn sheep.




My wet felting workshop taught us how to make a cobweb shawl. 


On Saturday, a group of 12 of us were exposed to 4 kinds of botanical dyes. Logwood for purple, Himalayan Rhubarg for gold, Cochineal for red, and fresh indigo for green. We also harvested flowers from TeDi's garden. Tedi supplied us with silk ribbon, a silk scarf, an ounce of wool yarn, and a cotton dishtowel. Play away!!

My last workshop was called "Blue" but it included overdying yellow onion and marigold with blue, creating (you guessed it) green. The teacher organized it so we each got a very mini skein of that each variation of color. The blues were 3 kinds of indigo, Saxon Blue, Prussian Blue, and Woad. The indigo had to be massaged in the air for equal time in the pot. It was fascinating!






Sunday afternoon I sat on their pergola/deck and soaked in the prairie landscape. By supper time I was at my campsite in Rocky Mountain National Park, drying my wool in my tent!


 

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