I had the fabulous opportunity to go on a road trip with Sharon and Louise to Shelridge Farm near Durham, Ontario.
Shelridge Farm has been producing fine yarns and custom knitting kits for hand knitters for almost 20 years now. They started out as an integrated sheep, wool and yarn business, and while they no longer own the sheep, they continue to focus on 100% wool and wool-based knitting yarns that they call Shelridge Soft Touch yarns. They have their yarns spun at a few select mills in Canada and the U.S., but perform all the rest of the manufacturing operations - skein winding, washing and hand-dyeing.
Our hosts were Buffy and Don Taylor. Buffy has developed a yarn production business featuring a wide range of yarn types and a large selection of hand-dyed colours. She's been dyeing yarn for about 20 years now.
Our mission: learn how to dye yarn.
What a fantastic day! I enjoyed every minute - the gloriously warm sunshine, the dyeing process, the puppy dogs, lunch in the workshop, Buffy's expert tutelage, and the very warm hospitality.
The cost of the course included the dyes, workshop and six skeins of yarn!
I dyed three skeins of light worsted and 3 skeins of fingering.
The three worsted skeins will be for the Hilja Vest by Niina Hakkarainen. Two of the fingering skeins will be for the Fiesta Mittens 220 by Lucy Neatby. The other two fingering skeins will be for socks - pattern not yet decided upon.
Who wants to see pics???
Louise dyeing sock yarn for the Tug Boat Socks by Lucy Neatby.
Worsted skeins for my Hilja Vest.
Fingering skeins for Sharon's Stained Glass Sweater.
Shelridge Farm Yarns
Group efforts
When the skeins are dry, I'll post more pics :-)
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