Pamplemousse Beginnings

It’s always nice to see where things begin and we were very good at taking pictures (if we didn’t always take notes). Jessie came over to my place with all the dyeing stuff in the midst of the most disgusting series of snow storms that we had in March. There was mistaken climbing into snowdrifts and blocking traffic on my quiet neighborhood street while Jessie, me and the taxi driver transferred 2 big boxes full of roving and 3 boxes of dyeing supplies to the sidewalk. Seriously this was a 15-20 min affair.

Once we finally got everything up into my treehouse like apartment, we quickly got to work and my kitchen was transformed into something more like this:

With the BFL roving soaking in my Ikea rubbish bins (washed out of course), we started to have fun playing with colour. One of our first batches and definitely a favourite, here’s Scooby Snacks ready to go in the oven:

Once the roving was cooking in my oven, Jessie taught me how to spin. And I made some of this:

I was instantly hooked on spinning and started comparing it to, um, other such hard to quit activities (hint: ‘I’m on drugs!’). I kidnapped Jessie’s lace weight spindle for the next several weeks and still continue to bother her for fibre and to ‘grade’ my progress.

After spinning, chatting, waiting for HOURS, our first batches were finally cooked. Just in time to go to bed. The next morning I woke up, rinse fibre as I took my shower and then hung things to dry. For the rest of the week my tub accumulated more and more roving on every available railing.

Here you can see some of the colourways from that week of dyeing:

Saturday morning, exactly one week from starting this craziness, Jessie came over to my place and we packed up our first shipment for Ariadne Knits in time for their first spinning class.

We trekked through a very snowy Montreal and a very busy Metro system to deliver the goods. And the reception we got at Ariadne really didn’t disappoint. As we were unpacking, someone bought one of our braids of Kaia despite the fact that she didn’t (yet) know how to spin. Even after I tried to convince her that she didn’t need to buy it right away (someone should have kicked me, selling stuff is kind of the whole point).

We started coming up with crazy names and setting up our roving in our very own shelving unit at Ariadne. Check it out:

Jessie and I may have stayed during the beginngs of the spinning class to eaves-learn and discuss future fibre possibilities (don’t worry, I’m signed up for the April class). There was some of this going on too:

We were super happy at the reception our rovings been getting from local spinners. We hope the novelty of each sale never goes away! Long live Pamplemousse en caoutchouc!