I Dye By Eye

Bet you thought I fell into the dye pots and would never return! The kettles have been steaming away and Dave says the house smells like Easter eggs!   I use vinegar as the mordant to set the dyes.  I dye by eye and by the seat of my pants most of the time.  However for this class I've tried to stay a little focused and stick to the more primitive colors.  Primitive can mean different things to different people. To me it means softer, subdued, not "in your face" colors. Secretly I have a love affair with 'in your face colors". But for this class I've decided to keep things a bit more subtle.  I'm using a softer spring like palette.

Some of the formula's I've dyed so far have names like Ashes of Rose, Buttermilk Paint Blue, and Old Rusty Apricot.  I have never dyed wool to sell or for anyone else.  I dye for my own rugs and projects.  Now having all this freshly dyed wool around  and not being able to hook with it is like telling a kid to keep her hands out of the cookie jar!  How does a hooker manage that?  Tempting myself even further I have been stripping the wool  to save time in class.  I want my students to concentrate on their hooking technique.  Although after a few thousand rounds of stripping with my little Bliss cutter I think the students will be learning to cut  a little more wool than I'd originally planned! 

I dye a lot of as found wools.  I love dyeing over textures and weird plaids.  I've had one ugly piece of wool in my stash (pictured above) that never seems to want to dye up decent. I've over dyed this particular wool at least six different colors  and it refuses to be pretty.  I threw a piece of it in with a pot of Bronzed Olive Green and finally, I think it turned into something fairly usable if not downright attractive!  I'm tempted to keep it for myself!  Sorry class!

So after this brief recess to blog a little, I'm returning to my studio to try and make some order out of chaos. I better hurry for I've ordered more wool and it should be here any day! I think I'm having fun!

If you live in my area  and would like to take my class, here is the link to the  WITC online catalog where you can get the information about the class.  There are lots of new classes being offered this Spring at the college in the continuing education division.  If I weren't teaching I may have taken the new artistic welding class.  I've always wanted to weld an artsy  creative trellis for my garden!





Cathy G