Indigo

One of my tasks for this morning is to unpack my bag from Saturday's Indigo workshop. We were told that the gloves we used would be exclusively devoted to Indigo from that day forth. Here's why:It feels like a bit of a badge of honour to have such stained gloves! I've tucked them into the shelf under the sink where I've found a spot for my indigo vat. Now I need to ring my dye suppliers and see about the materials I need to keep my vat going. It can sit for an indefinite period as it is, but I need a reducing agent to reactivate it before I can do any more dyeing. There are lots of different ways of setting up and maintaining a vat--some of them quite ancient and earthy--but this one relies on a few basic chemicals. There's also a fair bit of washing and rinsing to be done from the workshop before I can finish putting it all away, so I'd better get on with it.

Colour Me, Baby!

This crib sheet was pale pink a couple of days ago. Not any more:I tied it up with lots of little elastic bands, then dyed it in a fuscia colour. After a while I lifted it out, added a warm blue to the bucket and then dropped it back in again. Now it's soaking in the sink. It will take a while to finish rinsing. You guessed it, I still have procion dyes all over the house. I'm making slow progress on the conflicting tasks of using them up and cleaning up. I'll continue walking that particular tightrope today. My beading class has been potsponed again, so I have the day at home. I can cope with a fair bit of mess around the place as long as there's room to move. So, I'll work on that today. Meanwhile, the rinsing continues.

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.

More Rinsing

I'm still getting through all the rinsing from the cotton dyeing I did--ages ago now. The end is in sight, but it sure is taking a while to get there. Today I have two swatches of orange fabric in the laundry tub and this red one in the bathroom basin. The yellow one is drying on the line. Even though the dyes should be well and truly exhausted by now, I don't want to risk mixing colours. That's why I've kept this red one separate from the ones with some yellow in them. I think there's only one more colour run left after this one. It's purple, so I'll need a basin for the red, one for the blue and one for all the rest. If I'd thought about it I could have put the red one in with this one from the orange run, but I didn't think of it until right now as I was typing. Oh well.

As for my spinning, you guessed it . . . I'm still working on silk caps! I have to finish this bobbin and then do one more bobbin before I'm done with that spinning task. I also have to knit a swatch straight from the cap--I'll try to post details of that one.