At Encompassing Designs we like to work smarter, not harder, so we’re always looking for ways to cut time from a job and minimize waste while continuing to offer quality you can rely on.   For years I’ve said I should have been an efficiency expert, if such a thing exists, but I don’t hold a candle to my son Shane.  
 
Give him a job and he will come up with a way to make it easier and faster....things I've never even considered.  I’m impressed that the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree and proud that he can beat his momma on a few things.  

Shane does the dyeing for the shop, draws patterns and does arm-long lists of  jobs that might not be seen on the surface but keeps the place running like a well-greased wheel. Everything he’s touched has been altered to work faster. I heard a saying once “Give a job to a lazy person and he'll find a way to do it faster”. Now Shane isn't lazy so that really doesn’t apply, but it could read, “Give a job to a genius and he’ll find a way to revolutionize the process.”  
 
Different dyeing techniques call for various timing for prep and execution.  Scrunching wool in a pan to spot can be labour intensive because the secret to the overall appeal is the tightness and height of the folds which of course, takes time to place.   Then the uniformity of the various colours can depend on how you place the dye over these folds.  Too high or floppy folds mean dye won’t seep to the bottom and you have to spend more time digging out between the flaps to find the white spots.  My son has the spot dye down to a science.  I'll admit his scrunching is superior to mine.…momma doesn’t have as much patience, so there’s more chance of being sloppy…the dear boy's words, not mine.  

Spot dyes require proper pans and we’ve looked for them in yard sales and hardware stores. We've tried glass, enamel and steel all with varying results.  I guess that would make Shane and I just a bunch of pan handlers.....   Most large open-faced pans  come with areas around the perimeter  that are lower than the center of the pan, a trough along the edge for drainage when cooking I guess. After my father passed away I found two large pans in his panty that have served us  very well over the years but I have never seen another pan like them so we pray they have a long life.  

These stainless steel vessels hold a half yard of wool comfortably and although they still have that channel around the outer perimeter I have found it can be useful to create a slightly darker edge that can be used for a bit of shading.  so if you have a grassy green spot and need a bit of a shadow under a bush, the darker edges are perfect!  

Most of the enameled or glass pans we found weren’t quite the right size; the glass was too elongated and the enameled one was overall too small to make the right kind of folds needed to support all the different colours in the spot.  So we toyed with the idea to have a few pans custom made and as we worked out the pros and cons the idea struck to have one fabricated large enough to hold an entire yard of wool and flat bottomed for even distribution of dye. 
 
So we contacted a local welder and requested a pan with the dimension of the inside of our oven.   As big as we could go without touching the inside walls of the stove.  It worked like a charm.  Of course everything had to be doubled, the formula and the water to sufficiently cover twice as much wool.  We don’t use it often, Shane says that it takes him more time scrunching the wool into the tiny folds in the larger pan than he is able to process in two ½ yds ones,  but I beg to differ and there might have to be a spot "dye off"  to see which one leads the race.  Even though it may take more time preparing the wool for the big pan, it does cut down on the energy spent in oven heat and that kind of efficiency saves money and, more importantly, dyes twice as much for the wool racks.   

So for all you dyers out there that sell wool, having a pan made to order can cut down on the time you are slaving over a the spot dye.   The pan cost $30.00 to have made and that was paid for with the first piece of wool dyed.  One thing we didn’t take into account was that the two older stoves we work on might not have the same dimensions inside the oven so the pan we had made only fits the one stove. Who’d of thunk?   Even genius can learn from experience!  We had a second pan made and now we're covered. 

One thing I will caution about.  Make sure the pan's inside corners are smooth.  No areas where dye can settle in and later ooze out to stain the next piece of wool. Explain to the person making up the pan that there can't be any areas that leave gaps or where dyed water can get in.

Inspired by a picture on the internet I hauled out the dye pots last night.  I don't knit or hook with yarn but I love to play around with it, and we usually have baskets of hand dyed skeins in the shop for those that do.  The dip dyed, graduated method appealed to the colourist in me and I had to play around to see what I could encourage out of the pot.  Colour attracts me like a moth to a flame.  It awakens my creativity center and all kinds of thought balloons start bursting and ideas spill out so thick you can cut them like wool.    

So I used washed white Brigg's & Little and of course, Majic Carpet Dyes.  I placed an order for 100 skeins last week to dye and stock up the shop with all my new shelves and spacing.  I want to be wrapped in colour as if the shop is a wool shawl.  I'm going to stand in the center and twirl around and I want colour to kaleidoscope around me, only then will I be happy!  Some gals want diamonds, I just want wool in every nook and cranny, spilling out of baskets on the floor and racks on the wall.    I sometimes wonder if I'm cheating myself...maybe  I need to get some loftier goals, maybe a hike up Everest or something.  A bunch of dyed wool, no matter how smart, really isn't bucket list material...pardon the pun, but it seems to be all I want to do, at least for the moment!  Maybe I'm afflicted with some sort of addiction but at least I'll never become one of those hoarders you see on TV cause people keep coming in and taking the wool away!!!  

So I heated the pots and started with gold, a mixture of yellow and chocolate brown.  Dipped it until the colour absorbed and then added straight Red Violet.  Dip, dip, dip and then added straight concentrated Blue Violet.    I played with floral colours, recycling the end of one dye bath to start the base for the next and then built on that.  These will be one offs with no name or formula recorded.  I'm dyeing two skeins at a time, looped over a big stir stick to keep them from matting up.  A string would work as well but all I had was yarn and I worried it would snap in mid dipping and I'd loose the skeins in the pot and ruin the effect. 

It got late and I started getting stupid so had to put the pots away for the night but I plan to do more today, greens of course for leaves and more floral colours and of course the yellow, orange and red combo that's perfect for sunsets and campfires and the most delicious garden flowers you can imagine.    I see garden scenes when I look at the results because I'm flower crazy but I'll bet a few people out there could come up with unique uses for these wools?  I wonder how it would knit up?  Would it make an interesting pattern or look like a dog's breakfast?  It would make a pretty scarf, one of those things I see everywhere, a knitted neck roll/scarf that you pull over your head?  Canada's version of the Hawaiian lei.  

I'm always careful when people come into the shop and speak of wool because I immediately assumed fabric, but as the conversation evolves I sometimes discover they mean yarn.  Now it's all wool no matter how you look at it, but for me I need labels to keep things straight so I refer to the continuous spun wool as yarn and the woven, fabric as wool.  It's splitting hairs but when you're in the business of selling wool, clarity is a must.  So far there haven't been any mess ups in the order department, but that day will come and then I'll have a yarn to tell....

I downloaded this list from the internet...I thought maybe someone might like descriptions for the various wools we come across. 

Wool Fabric Types

Beaver cloth is a heavy woolen overcoating, napped and pressed down to resemble beaver fur.
Botany/Merino wool is a fine wool fabric made from worsted wool yarn.
Broadcloth is an all woolen or worsted fabric with a velvety feel.
Challis, a light weight soft wool fabric in plain weave, has a printed or woven design or flowers.
Cheviot, usually Scotch wool is a soft, fine wool that is heavier than serge.
Chinchilla cloth is a heavy, spongy woolen overcoat fabric with a long nap that has been rubbed into a curly, nubby finish.
Donegal was originally a thick and warm homespun or tweed woven by Irish peasants in Donegal, Ireland. Donegal now describes the wool tweed that has colorful thick slubs woven into the fabric.
Felt fabric is a compact sheet of entangled, not woven wool or fur fibers. The felt is produced by processing a mat of fibers with moisture, heat, and pressure.
Flannel wool is a soft, lightweight fabric with a nap on one or both sides.
Gabardine is a tightly woven wool twill with a high sheen. This fabric is excellent for tailoring and wears well.
Glen checks are usually seen in menswear and originated in Scotland. It is characterized by a variety of small, even check designs.
Harris tweed is a hand woven fabric from Scotland with a soft feel.
Heather Mixture describes tweeds and homespun’s that have colors of heather and sand of the Scottish heather fields.
Herringbone wool is woven in a twill that is reversed at regular spacing, creating a sawtooth line.
Homespun is a loose, strong, durable woolen woven either by hand or machine with a coarse feel.
Houndstooth check has a four pointed star check in a broken twill weave.
Jersey is a knit fabric that is usually knit in fine wool but can also be found in silk, and man-made fibers.
Laine is French for “wool”.
Lambsdown is a heavy knit fabric that has a spongy fleeced nap on one side.
Loden fabric is a thick, soft, waterproof, windproof, wool used in outerwear that has a characteristic green color.
Mackinaw fabric is a heavy double fabric in striking colored patterns.
Melton, a heavy, thick, short napped woven fabric that has been fulled.
Merino wool is soft and luxurious, resembling cashmere. This term is also used to describe the finest wools.
Oatmeal Cloth is a durable, soft wool with a pebbled face.
Panama Cloth, a plain woven worsted wool, sometimes resembling the texture of Panama hat.
Petersham, a very thick, waterproof woolen coating, usually dark blue, is used for men’s trousers or heavy coats.
Pilot Cloth is a coarse, heavy, stout twilled woolen that is heavily napped and navy blue. Used by seamen.
Poodle Cloth is made with a boucle yarn and resembles the Poodle dog.
Rabbit Hair is used in woven wool’s as a substitute for vicuna to give a soft effect in the fabric.
Sharkskin is woven with warp and filling yarns of alternating white with black, brown or blue.
Tartan is a twilled plaid design, originally Scottish.
Tweed is a rough textured wool, originally homespun and slightly felted. This fabric is sturdy with a mottled color.
Worsted is made up of short pieces woven together, 3” or 4” long,