Lovely dye day

This past Monday, I dyed some wool for a customer and decided that since the kitchen was a mess, I'd have some fun.

Here is a photo of the yardage I dyed. Pictured are Lavender Fields, Italian Marble, and Fireball.

After I got those out of the way, I decided to do some pancake dyeing. I used eight 1/8 yard pieces and 3 dyes: a mustard, a green, and an orange-red. Here is what I got. The colors are a bit more vivid and the wool is called Fall Energy. If you are interested in any of this wool, email me.

Next, the real fun began! Again, I took eight 1/8 yard pieces and soaked them for a bit.

Next, I crumpled each one into a little ball and arranged them in a stainless steel pan.

I got four dye formulas ready in individual cups.

Took each dye cup and poured over the little wool balls one at a time. As I poured each dye, I rotated the wool balls, and squeezed and scrunched them. Soon, they were ready to be simmered.

Simmered them for about ten minutes on top of the stove, and then I added vinegar. Let them go another 20 minutes and then into the washer and dryer.

Here is the wool after coming out of the dryer. This is one of my favorite parts of dyeing. I love folding the wool, checking the colors, and enjoying the feel!

Here are the results:

The picture above is the wool that was scrunched into little balls. Spectacular!!

All the wool is available for purchase. Contact me if interested and have a great day!

Drawing

I've been spending a lot of time drawing lately. I've discovered that with some patience, I can draw! I've been doing some watercolors and also using colored pencils. Here are a few of my latest efforts:

It just goes to show you that you can do anything if you are willing to give it a go!!

Using yarn in rug hooking

I've recently finished a challenge rug for my rug hooking group. We were challenged to create a Santa rug—any size, shape, etc. Had to have Santa in it, but Mrs. Claus was excluded!

Although I can't show you the rug, I did want to post a photo of some of the yarns I used in the rug.

The greens which were lovely textures—one kind of furry, and another a bouclé added great interest to the pine tree in the rug. The fluffly white yarn to the right was used for snow as was the Lamb's Pride pictured in the front. The very colorful yarn in the upper left corner is a thick, thin yarn and was used in Santa's coat. The colors were beautiful in this yarn, but it presented some difficulty due to the thickness of some of it. The light blue was used for the sky and is a Lopi bulky weight.

The challenge with using yarn is to keep the gripper strips from pulling it out when moving the rug around on the frame. I finally pinned some pieces of wool to the back of the rug where the yarn was to keep the grippers from "overgripping!!"

I purchased all the yarn from Webs in Massachusetts. They probably wondered what I was going to do with one skein of so many different yarns and colors.

I've also purchased some dyeable yarn from Catnip Yarns and will be using a thick, thin yarn for the background in my next rug. It is dyed in soft pastel shades. I'll show that yarn and pattern when the rug is ready to go.