implausibility of gnus: happy little lunatic...

i have a couple-few calls that i have been putting off making because i am genuinely sick of talking about the elephant in everyone's room. in fact, i sincerely wish that someone would design a bit of software so that when you place a call, instead of the usual sound of a phone ringing on the other end, you would be greeted with the following message:

the number you have dialed cannot be reached, because it will only add to this person's stress. please hang up your phone and try again when you want to talk about... anything else!

welcome to my life.

i spent part of the weekend stalking the Facebook page of a farm on the other side of Canada, and i purchased a couple fleeces from this year's clip. so there is a box somewhere with my name on it, full of right-off-the-sheep wool. you have no idea how happy this makes me.

in other news, the never-ending quest for distraction carries on.

after many years of neglect, i was already anxious about sitting down in front of my sewing machine, so this did not seem like a good time to get back to that particular craft. having once had a sewing machine needle break in my finger (i kid you not), i know far too well how dangerous that beast can be when approached with the wrong mindset, so i kept on looking.

i have been amassing a collection of bare (natural-colored) cotton-based yarn for dyeing, so this seemed as good a time as any to give it a try. my first ~~victim~~ sample was a cotton-acrylic yarn that i am already working on turning into a top to wear this Summer... if Summer ever happens, she says, staring at the snow presently drifting past the window.

this yarn was put up in one large hank, which is a massive tangled knot waiting to happen...

so i added a few extra ties to try to keep things organized. i may have also crossed my fingers at this point and hoped for the best.

i soaked the bundle of yarn for about two days in a soda ash solution, and arranged it in the bottom of a laundry basket, before sprinkling dry dye powder directly onto the surface of the wet fiber. i used Dharma Fiber Reactive Procion Dyes in the colors Robin's Egg Blue, Peacock Blue, and Watermelon, and i mixed a bit of each dye powder with kosher salt for more control when sprinkling it onto the fiber.

i wanted to keep the background relatively light, with little pops of color to break up the monotony. basically, i was trying to achieve something similar to all the lovely speckled wool yarns that are so popular in the knitting world. however, the dye i used for this is designed for cellulose (plant-based) fibers, so i knew that the color would not show up quite as intensely on this 50-50 cotton-acrylic yarn as it would on something with a higher cellulose content, but i persisted.

if you look closely, you can see the tiny specks of dye/salt, before they dissolve into the water in the yarn.

then i shoved the basket inside a couple recycling bags (which were re-used for their intended purpose) to prevent the yarn from drying out. the next morning, i gave the mass of fiber a flip, and repeated the sprinkle-and-plastic-wrap process.

it looked AMAZING, but i knew that a lot of that dye would end up being washed down the drain, so the end color would not be as intense on the finished yarn. still, i was super-pleased with the result at this point.

you can see how all those specks of dye have dissolved into something resembling a watercolor on the fiber.

unlike most wool dyes, this stuff does not require the addition of heat. all that was needed here was a bit of patience to allow the pigments to bond to the fiber. i was very tempted to wash it out after an hour or two after applying the color to the second side, but i knew i would have been disappointed if very little of it stuck to the yarn, so i ended up waiting until the following day to give it a wash.

it took a couple days to dry completely, which makes sense as it is a garment's worth of yarn in a single skein. finally it was done. look at it!!!

do you see all those lovely little blips of color? i was such a happy little lunatic at this point.

dye often "breaks" (separates), especially the ones that consist of a blend of different base pigments. as a result, you often find interesting colors popping up on fiber that has been dyed in this sprinkled-on fashion. i used two shades of blue and a watermelon color, so i was surprised to find little pops of yellow on the yarn. that is part of the joy/magic of hand-dying.