Fibermania

Process Pledge: Mixing Dyes

So much has NOT happened since last we spoke, except I went grocery shopping at my local Wal-Mart (not the big city Chattanooga version) and lo and behold they had Deer Park bottled water, 6 for $2 with the flip caps I wanted!!! The big city Smart Water was $1 each and had to be drunk up as it had chemicals in it that could possibly have interferred with the dye, or not. So who was the Smart one? Not Mel, but at least I got lots more usable dye bottles. Today it is raining AGAIN and chilly but they promise tomorrow will be sunny and warm and I will start dyeing for sure then. It will all be over in less time than it has taken me to procrastinate prepare all this.

I haven't balked this much since my first dye session over 21 years ago.

To begin, I am breaking all the rules and doing this in my cleaned up kitchen (miracle!!) since there really isn't any other place with accessible water. I will clean it back up to hospital standards, I promise.

My plastic tablespoon has disappeared so I am instead using a funny coffee measure I found in the utensil drawer, and a pyrex measure which was in the laundry room. I tossed out all my dye stuff or gave it away before we moved, because I was NEVER going to dye again, and so here I am, making do. The water in the bottles gets mixed with the dyes (3 cups of water per bottle, I measured) and two scoops of whatever that scoop holds, ABOUT.  I remembered to buy a funnel. That was a second miracle. The remembering part.

I did spill after mixing about eight bottles of dye. I cleaned the red dye up immediately after preserving the crime scene. I am reading a lot of murder mysteries this week. Blood spatters. Eeoouuww.

Ta da! The finished product...sort of.  I'll be storing these in the porch refrigerator until dye time tomorrow.
I mixed three greens: lime, grass and a dirty dark foresty green plus an aqua which is between turquoise and green. I know I need more of those colors in my stash. I didn't mix black yet. I'll do all the brights first and then get down to the darks after those. It's best to separate them for the later wash out.