knitting neels

On Monday, Lisa, Charlene (Ravelry link) and I travelled down to Westport to take a dyeing workshop on Tuesday. Monday evening turned out to be quite as eventful as Tuesday, though we weren’t planning it that way. When we got some dinner, we took a walk to see if there was anything to do for the evening apart from sitting in a pub somewhere. As luck would have it, we found a paint-your-own-pottery place! The guy very kindly agreed to stay open for us. It was great!

He had such a selection of pottery to choose from… everything from bowls and plates, mugs of every shape and size, to little plaques and frames. Lisa chose a giant mug, Charlene chose a bowl and I, who has trouble making decisions sometimes, chose a large mug and a spoon rest in the shape of a flying goose.

When we were finished painting our pieces, the guy told us that they would be fired and glazed for us, and would be ready for collection by Thursday. When we told him we were only staying one night, he offered to post them on. So I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my mug!

It was a very enjoyable activity but didn’t take up an enormous amount of time, so we went back to the pub where we had eaten and resumed usual weekend-away activities: sipping on a dry sherry and talking about the weather (read: knocking them back and telling wild stories). Our B&B was way outside the town so we opted to postpone leaving town too early (in light of what happened next, I feel I must stress that we did tell the B&B lady that we were going to do this). At 10:40, we rang her to say that we wouldn’t be much longer (one for the road etc) only to be informed that it was too late now and that we would have to find alternative accommodation! Luckily for us, the pub was part of the Wyatt Hotel and the staff kindly accommodated us with minimum fuss and maximum horror of our situation. What am I saying? They were brilliant.

Tuesday, in contrast, was very much as planned. The workshop took place at Derryaun Crafts, about twenty minutes further west of Westport. Suzie was the lady’s name and since her workshop is part of her house, I thought it was very kind of her to open up her house to us for the day. In the morning, we sat and took notes on the theory of it all. I am glad we did this because if we had just been told, I would have forgotten everything by now.

Charlene and Suzie

The afternoon was very hands-on. So hands-on, in fact, that I still have blue hands. We wound off sample skeins of yarn, and took bunches of fleece, soaked them all and dyed them with paint brushes. We also watched the process of natural dyeing, which seems like much, much more hassle than it is worth. It was still very interesting to learn about though.

My stuff to the front and Lisa’s skeins to the back

After we had painted up a few batches of yarn and fleece, we wrapped them up in oven roasting bags and popped them in the microwave. They were then laid on the path to cool and rinsed out. We all got to bring our attempts back with us… but I don’t have anything dry to show you yet, because I completely forgot about my wet bag of stuff until last night!

Charlene’s skeins

Suzie very kindly dropped us back to the train station in the evening and we got back around 10pm Tuesday night. Phew! It was great fun and totally worth while.