self striping yarn may be the funnest to knit up, but it is not the funnest to dye. preparing the skein is a bitch. lucky for me, i have a warping board that makes the process a lot easier (for lee because he usually does it for me). what you have to do is make the skein longer so that the yarn will stripe in a visible and predictable way. i'll draw a pic for you later. i usually use a warping board--another pic forthcoming--to stretch my skeins out to about 12ish feet for 3 colors with stripes the same width.
since i was getting bored with that, i decided to go back to the way i used to do it with 17ish feet skeins so i could have more color and variance in the width of the stripes. my board isn't that big (yet). so instead, i set up two chairs in the backyard the requisite length apart. (yay for 80 degrees in wisco in march!!) then i proceeded to walk around and around these chairs about 40 times with a cone of yarn in my hand. i got dizzy after 15 rounds, headachy after 25 rounds, and centimeters from throwing up at 40 rounds. could only manage to deal with all that twice in one day. this is not going to be an effective process, methinks. or i have to include the cost of ibuprofen and cold washcloths in the price of my yarn.
today i came up with the idea to try poles instead of chairs. this worked much much much better because i could just walk fifteen steps in one direction, turn around, and walk 15 back. fabulous! no feeling vomitous. but i did smash my thumb hammering the poles in the ground. my self-striping skeins will have to include the cost of ice and band-aides.
i'll let you know about other mishaps that may increase the prices as well.
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