Warm Weather Work

My task for yesterday was to dye up the mercerised cotton weft for my double-weave bag. What better task for another hot, hot day!

I wound off 840 metres of perle cotton on my niddy noddy before it got too hot. That was six 20g balls from my crochet cotton stash. A few years ago, I went through a phase of doing very fine cotton crochet. These balls were leftover. Now they'll get a new life in my weaving. Winding yarn on the niddy noddy is surprisingly physical work when there's that much of it to do.

My next step was to soak the cotton in warm soapy water to get rid of any sizing or other additives. Meanwhile I mixed up the soda ash and dye stock solutions for my dyeing.

Here's the yarn with the dye added: I used my two primary blues and just a touch of lemon yellow mixed with the turquoise. There's a bit of dishwashing detergent in the dye solutions to help me paste them up, so the whole batch was a bit soapy--especially because I used as little water as I could get away with.

The beauty of dyeing cotton on a hot day! I just left the batch in the sink while I went out and about for the afternoon. Then it was time to rinse. By that time splashing around in a sink full of cold water was a welcome relief.

I left the yarn to soak in the sink overnight, just to be sure it was fully rinsed. Now it's ready to dry. Tomorrow I should be able to weave with it.