My Handwoven Thoughts

July 8th was our first official dyeing day. Silly me, I forgot my camera. The day was a trial run of what we will be doing on a regular basis. We will take three colors and mix them in different percentages to get an array of related colors. The primary colors we started with did not give us the results we were hoping for. Seems the blue was too strong and it really overpowered the yellow and to a lesser extent the red. So the 36 colors we ended up with were a nice bunch of dark blues, browns and some reds. All very dark. So much depends on the dyes you start with, the fiber you are dyeing and the percentages used.

Next month we will try the same formulas again with new primary colors to start with and a lighter depth of shade. I am looking forward to getting a library of color recipes to start dyeing my own tencel yarn for weaving projects. I’ll also remember my camera and add a picture of the first dye results to this later.

I always seem to be trying to finish several projects at once. Or should I say, ignoring several projects while I am working on one that has caught my attention at the moment. I need to be doing several things and right now the one that is keeping my attention most of the time is weaving off the workshop warp from the baby wolf.

A few months ago, we had Bonnie Inouye come to town for the Guilds annual weaving workshop. The topic was “Advance” and what a wonderful time we had. I still had warp on the loom when I came home and decided to weave a couple of simple cotton scarves. This is the second one I am working on and if I would just get motivated, it could be taken off the loom today.

I think I will add some beads to the fringe to dress these up a bit.

I’m so excited. I dug the lace pillow out from under the table it has been hiding under for the last year and a half. I decided I wanted to make up a supply of bookmarks that I could give as gifts. It is nice to have a supply because you never know when you might need one.

The pillow was so dusty, I didn’t cover it properly when I stopped using it and I still need to work on removing more dust. I decided not to wait and found a simple bookmark pattern I had done once before.