a gift for a friend

i had tea with a lovely friend of mine about a month ago.  we hadn’t talked for a long time and this visit was such a great chance to catch up and deepen our friendship and we both had difficulty stopping chatting when it was time to leave.  she is a knitter and i am a sew-er (i can’t bring myself to type “sewer” as in “one who sews” because that word, well, has another meaning.  is that really a correct word?) and during our conversation, she mentioned to me that she’d always wanted to try knitting with rag strips, but couldn’t imagine sewing all of the strips together to make the “yarn.”  well, i figured that with my easy bias-tape tutorial, i could make quick work of sewing all of those strips, so…i decided to surprise her with a gift of rag yarn!  there was a painting at the tea house that she pointed out and said she just loved the warm red and yellow colors the artist had used, so i decided to go with that as my inspiration.  i looked in several thrift stores for good sheets in reds and yellows and…. meh.  i didn’t find much.  finally, i purchased a light pink and a light grey sheet–both cotton sateen–and three bottles of liquid dye (one red, one yellow and one tan to mute the red and yellowth down a bit).  i dyed the sheets (yellow was easy, red was a little trickier, but not impossible) and then i found this easy knotting tutorial online that doesn’t involve any sewing after all!  i marked the fabric at 1.5″ intervals and ripped the sheets into strips (much to the delight of my kitties), then following the instructions on the site mentioned above, i knotted the ends together and wound them into the balls pictured above.  i think the sheets were queen size (maybe full?) and each yielded about 4 softball sized balls of yarn.  the instructions suggest using size 19 needles.  i’m assuming that means something to knitters?  i gave them to her tonight and she was so excited!  i can’t wait to see what she makes with them (but no rush!).