Acid Dyes! Finally!

All of my at home dyeing has been with either Kool-Aid or food coloring. It's not that I haven't had the knowledge or skills to use professional acid dyes, but I just never got around to mixing the stock solutions, until last Tuesday. I bought the acid dyes awhile ago, (I didn't realize it was in January until I connected the link to the post! wow! hehe) and because you have to take quite a few safety precautions, ie. particulate mask, big rubber gloves, etc I've stuck with the easier methods like Kool-aid (plus the Kool-aid smells good *wink*)

Anyways, I played around a bit with the acid dyes, and I forgot that the blue takes awhile to "stick" to the fleece, so a lot of my reds were supposed to be purples. I know next time I will probably over dye instead of just mixing the red and blue together to get purple. Or maybe buy a purple dye to save time. Here are a few pictures from my wonderful and colorful day.

Local Sheep fleece from Ontario, Canada

Local Sheep Fleece from Ontario, Canada

Merino

Polworth

Every time I try to be adventurous when I dye, and use different colors together that are not in the same color family, ie. complimentary I always end up with "Swamp Fleece":

Polworth

Wenslydale

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the "Swamp Fleece", but It would be nice to have some pretty colors like you see in the stores or on Etsy. I think I'm going to try drum carding the "Swamp Fleece" and see if it makes it any better. hehe

Indigo Day

Last Monday, well.. not LAST Monday, but the Monday before that, I went over to Janna's house for an Indigo Party. There were quite a few of us, mostly from my Textile Arts course at Capilano University, including Ana from "Dreamy Isabel". We had a great time! I've never seen so many things dyed Indigo, even on our very first day of dying with this wonderful vat at school. I did dye a few ounces of Merino and a local sheep fleece from Ontario (from a Craftster swap) and they turned out beautifully, but unfortunately I haven't taken pictures of the fleece yet (hopefully tomorrow), but I DO have some pictures of the party.

You can see my local sheep roving on the back corner of the drying rack. hehe

A beautiful dress dyed indigo. It was originally white.

Mini Update

I had a big dye day yesterday. And last week I went to an Indigo Party. Pictures are soon to come.

Knit Project: "Every Way Wrap"

I have started a new knitting project! I'm very excited about this one. It's probably going to be the biggest knit project to date; in both size and work.

It's from the Fall 2009 issue of Interweave Knits:

Sorry the pictures are bad.

This issue has lots of beautiful designs! There are a few projects in it that I might have to muster up some courage to work on

Photo Adventure!

Yesterday I went to UBC Research Forest (which apparently now called Malcolm Knapp Research Forest?) with a friend and we photographed our hearts out! I was looking for a little inspiration because my creativity has plummeted since I left school in April for the summer. Well, I ended up taking 195 pictures, and I definitely could have taken more if we weren't on a time limit. Here are a few of my favorite pictures:














It was hard just to pick a few pictures! lol ... We have tentative plans of going back next week.