13 May 2007

a day to dye for...

The Eastern Group of the Irish Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers held a Dying Day at Kathleen's lovely home in Co. Kildare. Holly demonstrated chemical dying techniques using and Kool Aid (scary thought... Kool Aid as a chemical dye???). In Kathleen showed us some natural dying techniques using bark and onion skins.

My enthusiasm of this new experience is chronicled in photos, as you can see from the length of this post. I was "little bit" snap happy with the camera...

Here Holly demonstrates dying some of her homespun using powered dyes:











Wow...

I assumed that mixing dyes was an exact science, however, Holly proved me wrong when she mixed in the left over dyes into the pot...



and cooked up a lovely hue of magenta...

I am amazed with what you can do with Kool Aid...

Holly started to using the grape flavoured Kool Aid to over dye some yarn...



however, the brown in the yarn over powered the purple of the Kool Aid, so she switched over to the lime...


then, into the microwave it goes...


and viola... no it is not a veggie...

Now for handpainted roving or fleece tops as it is called on this side of the pond...
Using, a medicine dropper Holly paints the dye onto the roving...watch how it absorbs the colours





wrap in "cling wrap" and steam...



hand painted roving....

Kathleen also showed us some natural dying tecniques using natural dyes...

Here Kathleen demonstrates dying with the bark of logwood







Moving on to veggie peelings...Kathleen boils up some onion skins, strains off the liquid to dye the yarn

30 minutes later...

I was overwelmed with the wealth of knowledge of Holly and Kathleen's dying experience, I begged Kate to take notes for me too...

While, the yarns were "cooking"...I took the oppportunity to take more photos...

as a certified "city slicker", I had no idea what this was....gigantic rabbit pellets, maybe???


no...peat...I'm used to going out to the local garden centre and picking up a bag of peat

willow "twigs"... just waiting to be weaved into a basket...

or


how about this awesome fence...

9 comments:

Ger said...

OH wow what an interesting post. That dyeing looks amazing,and the colours that can be achieved. I might be persuaded to try the hand dyeing with the medicine dropper.Looks like you had a good day.

Holly said...

Wow, Diane. You have way more photos that I do. I'll just refer over to your blog. We used the same name too!! Ha!

Anonymous said...

Amazing process isn't it? I've dyed yarn with Kool-Aid also. Next time, I'll try your warpping in plastic method.

Anonymous said...

as a newbie to the dyeing thing myself, I found your post fascinating.... thank you so much!!!! so, when are you going to start?

: )

Anonymous said...

Wow!! Im so glad you were trigger happy with the camera!! Makes me feel as if I didn't miss the meet up after all!Ive tried the wrapping in plastic and it works out great.

Jodi said...

That looks like so much fun! I would especially love to try using natural dyes.

Julia said...

Thanks for all the awesome pictures. Makes we want to break out the kool-aid again!

Anonymous said...

That looks so interesting and like real fun! I've never dyed, but I'd really like to try, especially after this post!

Anonymous said...

I was sorry to miss the meeting - appreciate your photos and commentary.