Twice each summer, my wonderful mother-in-law, Carol, hosts a dye day at her house in Wasilla. An assortment of women from the Valley Fiber Arts Guild and Anchorage Weavers and Spinners Guild bring over yarn and fiber to dye. They mostly use chemical dyes because they're quick and easy, but every once in a while someone shows up with natural dye products to play with.
After several years, I finally made it to a dye day two weeks ago (yes, it's taken me this long to write about it). My life in fiber started over 30 years ago with crocheting and counted cross stitch, but really began in fiber arts with basket making almost 20 years ago. Since then I've dabbled in weaving, spinning, knitting, quilting, etc., etc., etc. My shed (which I was informed is famous in three guilds) is full of tools, equipment and materials for several lifetimes of projects.
I haven't, however, done anything in fiber in at least three years. I couldn't finally go to a dye day without a project, so I dug through the shed looking for some commercial rug yarn I knew I had but didn't like. After looking through eight or ten boxes, I finally found it. In the process, I also realized that I really miss working with fiber. As my fingers fondled bumps of merino and polypay wools, skeins of silk roving, bags of cotton fiber, and more, I itched (not literally!) to spin yarn and make something, anything. Alas, time does not permit that right now, but I will share with you some photos of what we were doing on dye day.
The balls of drab rug yarns I though could benefit from over-dyeing.
These are the pure color choices from Sabraset Dyes. Of course, they can be combined for unlimited possibilities.
Like in a chemist's lab, there are an array of chemicals and tools to use for dyeing. Here are just a few (the bags have powdered dyes and the jars are dyes mixed with water).
I chose to dye whole skeins of yarn in a pot of dye to get solid colors.
Once my yarn had been simmered in dye for about 30 minutes and had cooled, each skein had to be rinsed to remove excess dye. Carol graciously helped with this process.
Here are the final colors I created that day. Since then I've also added a gold to the mix.
Rowan the Mad Dyer is creating her own skeins of yarn for knitting. She was into simply dripping dyes onto the skein to create her own masterpieces.
Another option is to paint dye on a skein (for knitting) or a warp (for weaving). Here Connie is painting a warp that will eventually become a series of scarves.
No all I have to do is get Carol to weave me a rug from my beautiful yarn....
