Painted Skein

OK, so the house is still awash with procion dyes: dyes in the kitchen-living room, dyes in the bathroom . . . so far I've managed to keep them out of my bedroom. Yesterday I used up the last of the thickened dye from last week. By mixing up the dye powder with an alginate thickener, I get to work with something the consistency of poster paint. I found this just a little too thick to really cover the cotton yarn, especially when it's dry, so I've been experimenting with adding dye solution to the mix. Here's yesterday's effort: This is a real improvisation. I've used some thickened dyes and some straight from the dye pot, and I pretty much decided on the colours as I went along, depending on what I had left in front of me. I'll be interested to see how the colours come out when rinsed. I'm thinking some of them may be quite pale, since the thickened dyes are over a week old. The intense colour you can see in the pic is unrinsed. I'll leave it another 24 hours to give the thickened dyes the best chance of reacting, then I'll see what I get.

Funky Feet

Here's one of the pairs of socks I showed in yesterdays post--plus colour:The socks and singlets are all done: dyed, rinsed and ready to hang on the line. They were one of the bonuses of this batch of dyeing. The yarn colour samples, which were the main point of the exercise are all dyed, but I've only just started rinsing them. That will take a while and my pile of dirty dishes is growing, so I'll have to make an effort to get them through the sink fairly promptly.

Using dye thickener was my big experiment yesterday. I've had the manutex paste for ages, but never quite got around to trying it. Well, now I've tried it and I'm amazed. Manutex paste plus dye makes something with the consistency of poster paint. And it behaves just like paint as it comes off the brush. It just stays where it is put. That caused me some difficulty with the painted skeins because I had to work fairly hard to cover each strand. On the other hand I was able to make a much clearer distinction between areas of colour than I can with the straight dye. As for fabric, I found myself painting little lines, dots and a heart--just like a kinder kid! The fabric needs to air cure for a couple of days before rinsing, so stay tuned. Meanwhile I'd better get back to the rinsing: three skeins clear and fifteen to go. I'm afraid I'm going to be tired of my sink quite soon.