I'm dyeing out here!

So it dawned on me shortly after my last post that I needed to get a move on creating things for the Great Western War (or GWW for short).  I need new stock and more stock (shameless plug for GriffinCliffe designs).  So all of this month, I have been telling myself to get my butt in gear.  And I have ignored myself.  So I plan a dye day.  And then life happens, so I postpone it and then it was the weekend of the Griffin DyeWorks Fiber retreat.  Except that I twisted my knee and was reclining and reading all weekend.  So here we are - with a really nice heat wave this weekend.

I can't put it off - Its bad enough I can't weave more then an hour a day (heat and knee) and today its suppose to be 99 degrees out there - it was 107 degrees at 5PM.  Nevertheless!!  Up at 7AM(ish) - dress, eat breakfast, trim the roses (front and back yards), water the compost pile and feed it (saw a nifty dung bettle come out of the pile - very pretty), uncover camp stove (oh Hunny - come kill the black widow for me), move the tables to the back yard (need them there for the 4th anyway), open dye crate, get roving, pot, dyes, water.  And I'm ready.  Time for some water - for me. 
9AM and I'm ready to play.

 

I was going with 4oz. of roving for each dye batch.  I had some unknown wool (from an estate sale last year) so I braided it loosely and with some short fiber unknown wool I got in the raffle at last year's Fiber Retreat (in a "delicates" bag) put those in my big dye pot with a 1/2 oz. of Cushings Peacock dye and let that simmer at about 160 degrees for about 1/2 hour. 

 

While that was cooking, I painted the next 4 oz. of roving with some Jacquard dyes (red, blue, yellow and green).

 

        

One nice thing I've learned about dyeing - the uglier the roving, the prettier the yarn.

So after this, it was remove the braid and bag from the dye pot and let them cool down.  So I went to another roving I had and made a tighter braid and put it in the big pot.

The next space dyed roving I used only 3 colors - as it was hotter then hell out here - I'll make my own fire.  So this was with red, yellow and orange.  yes, I know red and yellow make orange.

 

 

 

Nevertheless (I love that word), This gave me two differnt shades of orange.  So with this done, I turn my atterntion back to the Big Pot.  I pull the final braid out and set it aside to cool.  I dumped the dye water out (it was fairly clear - just  a little bit of green in it) and put in freah water to steam my other two dyed roving.

 Here are the two braids - I did the first one loose (I think I said that) and second one a lot tighter - to have more "white" space

 

The day's work

Done at 1:30PM - and I went inside the house and died.  Next week - natural dyes stuff (got to get spinning).

Oh, and Hubby - The cement is only a little bit dyed - You'll never notice (much).  :-)