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....
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....
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