Handpaint Country

I thought I would devote today's post to Whoduknit, since I am finally caught up on the September book and project! I know I promised you an FO today, and if you check out the Whoduknit blog, you can see what I have accomplished this week. It's not much, but it's something!

Back in August, we read The Tooth of Time by Sue Henry. The book is set in Taos, New Mexico, and some of the action takes place at a yarn shop called Weaving Southwest. The author also mentions a book called Handpaint Country by Cheryl Potter and has the main character knitting a ruana from a pattern in the book. Well, I thought that it would be interesting to take a look at the book and see the pattern for myself, so I put in an interlibrary loan request and then pretty much forgot about the book. I guess it wasn't easy to get hold of, because the week before I left for vacation, the book finally arrived on my desk. (I'm not complaining, mind you. My ILL people are wonderful and hard working. Sometimes it just takes time to get a book.)

I'm bringing all this up now because it is almost time to give the book back but I do want to talk a little bit about it. If you get a chance to read the book, take it! The book is a feast for the eyes and will appeal to anyone who does anything with yarn. The author and her photographer travelled around the country visiting hand-dyers of yarn, talking with them about their techniques, and photographing the yarns. Each chapter also includes 2 knitting patterns using the yarns to their best advantage. Some of the dyers are well known, such as Koigu, Cherry Tree Hill, Fiesta Yarns and Weaving Southwest. Others you might not have heard of. All of them are doing beautiful work, however. The book concludes with notes from the designers of the patterns on using hand dyed yarns and a brief tutorial on the techniques and terms used in the hand dying process. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to read the book as thoroughly as I would like, but even just glancing through it was a delight. And with so many handpainted yarns available these days, it was really interesting to see something of the techniques used to make them.

Well, I'm off to Borders for Coffee, Chat & Crochet with my guild. Have a great day!