Another victim lured to the Dark Side

[Insert evil, maniacal laughter here.]


While here in Myrtle Beach, my mother-in-law mentioned that one of her friends wanted to learn to knit, so over the friend came last night to learn the intricacies of the craft. ("It's loops pulled through loops. You keep them from unraveling with cast-ons and cast-offs. The rest is details." I get really intense on this stuff.) However, the lady I was teaching already knew how to weave and arrived with Really Good Wool (imported! from Germany!) to LEARN with. She caught on fast and today we do purling. It is a great pleasure to teach someone who Gets It.

I've been reading "Color" (the history one, not the color theory one), and in the 'Black' section, it explained how before synthetic dyes (even now, really) achieving black fabric and yarn was much more difficult than most other colors. It was a two-step dye process. First an indigo underdye, and then logwood over top. Obviously a two step process is about twice as expensive as a one step. This means that the Puritans, running about Europe in their black clothes, were the fashion-of-the-day equivalent to televangelits wearing diamond rings while swearing they spend all their money on charity. Very interesting. And also, if they got ripped off on the fabric, the indigo underdye step was skipped, and only the logwood was used, leaving the Puritan in question walking around in a black suit that was gradually fading to ORANGE. I'm imagining Cotton Mather in an orange jumpsuit from the LA County lockup, and snickering.

Off to another exciting day of knitting. There are rumors of yarn shopping.