What I Did on My Long Weekend

Once I started feeling like I did not want to die. I dyed. The Odd Tuesday bunch gathered at Andrea's house, with our cotton rovings, cotton/rayon roving, cotton/wool rovings, a whole bunch of cotton lint, MX dyes, cushing dyes, and even some peach water that had had peach leaves (boiled or soaked I am not sure) and we set up on the deck in the sun shine, (Andrea rescued me from sunburn with some sunscreen) so while I have dyed I no longer look like a ghost. No one would call it tan, but I am not stark white anymore.

We are all members of the Garden Spinning group on Ravelry, and we are participating in a cotton "learn to dye" swap. So we gathered, some with cotton soaked in water, some with cotton soaked in soda ash. Viki had her pretty daughter with her and Mariah took pictures of the process. Cindy took verbal notes for a podcast, so as soon as there is anything up I will edit this to add the links to pictures and podcast. (Edited to add links and photos)

So we dyed, and had a lot of fun and did not make too big of a miss. Then they loaded all my stuff back in the car, which I really, really appreciated, cause I was exhausted! I followed the directions of my new GPS home. I don't think it likes my house because it keeps insisting that Richard's new mansion up the road is mine and while I am willing to accept that idea, I don't think Richard or his wife will go for it. Once home I collapsed and went to bed early.

This morning, I started rinsing. Started with the wool cotton roving that I dyed with Cushings, then I rinsed the brown cotton that, once it was soaked in the soda ash water ,looked decidedly green, so I just brought it back, and rinsed it and hung it out, it is almost dry so I can see soon if it is staying green or will turn back to brown.

And then I started rinsing the cotton for the swap. There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference in the amount of dye that took in the cotton that was soaked in the soda ash, and the cotton that was just soaked in water, but the cotton soaked in soda ash rinsed faster than the other.