Getting Ready to Dye

This morning I mixed up the dye solutions for the projects I'll be working on this week.  With the solutions already mixed, dyeing the yarn will be much simpler - just mix the solutions in the right proportions and put them in the crockpot with hot water, yarn and, after a while, a little soda ash.

Mixing the dye solutions reminds me a little of my chemistry major days:

While the yarn simmers in the crockpot, I'm working on the lavendar scarf on the rigid heddle loom - see the "What I'm working on now" pic in the margin.

A Week's Vacation

I have a week’s stay-cation and my plan is to fill it with as much fibery goodness as possible. First stop was my yarn stash to see what spoke to me. There were lot’s of possibilities, but I settled on this:

Doesn’t it remind you of Monet’s Water Lilies? But there is not enough to warp up a full shawl, so back to the stash where I found this white cotton rayon blend. I don’t want white, though, but this cotton/rayon blend should dye up beautifully with Sabracron F dyes. Using my swatch book from Sarah Lamb’s workshop, I picked a blue and a green to match the Water Lily yarn, and a purple for some 20/2 silk for the weft.

It will take a couple of days for me to get all the yarn dyed. I don’t want to wait to start weaving, so in the meantime, I warped up my rigid heddle loom with a warp I’d had sitting around for a while.

This is a mélange of left over yarns: some black and purple ladder yarn, pink and purple eyelash, purple 20/2 silk (doubled), purple wool (a sample from a workshop) and some gray kid mohair from a UFO sweater. The weft is a super-fine lavender kid mohair.

Tomorrow I start weaving and dyeing.

More Leftovers

Who said that leftovers can't be wonderful!  Here's the second scarf in the leftovers project.

The warp is peacock blue Fun Fur, Trendsetter Murano railroad track yarn, and a little black sock yarn. The weft is very fine kid mohair, beat very, very gently to make an open fabric.


The resulting fabric is a little bit fuzzy, a little bit shiny and drapes beautifully.