Dyeing for yarn

Okay, I'm a leeeeetle bit excited here.

This morning I got up early (for me). Summer vacation has finally arrived; I've been working at school since the school year ended, finishing up some projects and moving everything out of our office, then back in after the floors were cleaned. We've been in that school for only two years, and this is the third time we've had to pack everything up and move it across the hall into the conference room. It's getting old, and so am I.

So anyway, yesterday was my last day at work for a while. Mary (my immediate boss) and I still have a project to finish, but since it involves contacting students who "left" school in 2006, most of what remains will have to be done in the evenings and on weekends. This week I'm dog/cat/bird/fish-sitting for my sister's menagerie while she's basking on the beach.

I could have slept really late this morning, but Kipper, my sister's very emotionally-needy English setter (I think) didn't agree. I got up at 6 to feed him, medicate him, and let him and the others go outside. After they came in I went back to bed, but Kipper wasn't happy with that arrangement. After a couple of hours of "Woof. Woof. Woof." I gave in and got up.

We don't get the local paper at home, and I never read the help wanted ads because I have a job I like and can retire from in about 5-8 years. This morning I did read the ads, and this is one that I found to be most interesting:

In my last post I mentioned that I'd bought some ClaudiaCo (http://www.claudiaco.com/) handpainted yarn and was knitting a pair of socks. I've read about Claudia's yarn on knitting blogs from all over the place, and I had to have some for my own. I bought it at one of the two wonderful yarn shops in town, Rocktown Yarns (http://www.rocktownyarns.com/).

I started a sock that turned out stripey, not bad-stripey, but not my favorite, so when I got to the point of turning the heel, I started a second sock using Cookie A.'s Monkey pattern from the Winter '06 edition of the online knitting magazine, Knitty (http://www.knitty.com/) (tons of great patterns and articles there, and they're all free!)

So I called Claudia and she asked me to come over (every bit of about two blocks from where my sister lives, and not too far from the high school where I work) and see if I was interested in the job. Interested? I'd almost pay her to let me work there. One of her employees showed me around the place. Oh, the yarn, the colors, the yarn. Then she asked me if I wanted to fill out an application. Um, yes. I filled it out, then I went to Claudia's office to talk to her.

Either she's desperate for help or she likes me and my qualifications (I brought my socks that I'm knitting with her yarn), because she hired me on the spot. To work ten-hour days in the summer in a room with about 10 burners holding huge pots of steaming yarn, to fish the wet, heavy yarn out and hang it to drip, then move it down the hall to the drying room (which has a dehumidifier, which should be nice after a few hours in a steamy room). That's where I start tomorrow. Dyeing yarn, something I've always wanted to learn. (Okay, I've wanted to learn it for the last five years, since I started buying yarn for knitting and discovering the addictive, expensive world of handpainted yarn.)

I'll learn to mix the dyes, wind them into hanks (she has machines that will wind 10 hanks at once, automatically), then twist them (another machine) into those neat little uh, twists of yarn.

I'll get to fondle yarn and not be considered weird.

No, I'm not quitting my day job. This one just won't pay enough to buy groceries, much less retirement. I'll work full-time in the summer and after school the rest of the year. The pay is very low, but above (current) minimum wage, but get this: I can buy her yarn at her cost. I. Can buy yarn. Gorgeous, soft, handpainted yarn that is too expensive for me to normally touch, much less buy. This is especially welcome after the budget that Tom bamboozled me into drew up with me last night, a budget that doesn't allow for the purchase of much yarn at all if we want to keep traveling. It's like the answer to a prayer. I get to work with yarn! Famous yarn, at that. She's recently contracted to sell it in a shop in Australia, in addition to Canada and England.

And maybe this is the answer to what I'll do after I retire from the school system. I've been trying to figure out what I can do that I'll love doing, that's creative, that's fun, that allows me to buy nice yarn. I'm not going into it thinking that this is going to be an easy job; I suspect that it's going to be hard physical labor, but it's doing something that I want to learn how to do. How many people actually get paid for doing something they'd do anyway?

It's a good thing that my hair likes humidity.

P.S. Claudia said that it was genius (well, not exactly genius, maybe) to make two socks of different patterns from the same yarn. I've considered wearing them like that, but one is made on a size 1 needle and the other on a 1.5. I don't know yet how that's going to work out, but I'm all for not having to rip out and knit another sock.