Been Too Busy to Blog

A few new things have been cooked up in the last week-or-so. May 10 was spent out at Wellington Fibres,, getting a look at how proprietor and professional dyer Donna gets things done. While one can get the basics of dyeing out of books, Donna's scientific approach was incredibly informative, and you can't beat learning from the benefit of another's experience.




I'm not sure if I can let the blue one into the shop, but the mixed-berries colour will be (there are two).

I also learned some common sense about dyeing fibre - namely, onion bags. Keeps it from floating all apart. This roving was handpainted, but rinsed in the bag. Since I never eat enough onions to buy a whole bag, I discovered dollar-store zippered lingerie wash bags do the same job.



No, I didn't mangle a roving, by the way. Some of what I took to experiment on was some $5/lb superwash/nylon blend mill ends, which will eventually be for my carding, blending, and spinning experiments.

Yesterday and today were spent replicating the work in the kitchen. Today's results are still drying, but yesterday's were alright. One of two fibre one-offs obtained by dumping the unused Wilton's mixes from a couple weeks ago into a pot:



and this, done with the potentially messy technique of sprinkling dye powder onto wet yarn:



I could only do that with Gaywool, really, which is constituted more like salt crystals as the acid is in the mix. Do NOT try any such thing with Jacquard unless you have lab-grade containement for that flyaway powder.

We'll leave the spinning for another day, but I had to show this off, too. My dye studio.


Yep, after a few go-rounds of making a mess, shoving all the clutter into a corner of my room, then making more mess, I dug this tower of rolling file boxes out of storage. Everything but my big roasting pan fits in. 2 canning pots, 24 mason jars, 12 turkey basters, assorted spoons and syringes. The reason the lid is a bit elevated is inside the top bin is another bin I've made into an ersatz "glove box" in which dye powder can be mixed up (while I still wear gloves and a mask) with very minimal risk of mess or transfer or inhalation. I love that I can now put the whole kit back in storage, and roll it out when I need to.