Fabric Dyeing Workshop pt. 2

Here are my results from the workshop:

I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. Most of the pieces are lightly marbled (instead of a tie-dyed effect) which is quite nice (I was too lazy to take a picture of each individual colour). Today we did some two colour experimenting (ie: put one colour in the bottom of the cup, then the fabric, then pour another colour over top) and some people painted with the dyes. Rinsing all the colours took quite a while and then when we got home we put everything in the washer/dryer then ironed it.
I would love to do another workshop like this - I had fun doing the rainbow thing with the three primary colours and I think it would be fun to do more experimenting with different shades of red/yellow/blue.

I'm planning on making a colour wheel quilt (pattern in Last Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts) and have about half my fabric with what I have dyed. Hopefully it won't be too tedious to find the other half.

Here's a picture I took yesterday on my way home from the workshop:

Temperature: -35C
Sunrise: 10:42am
Sunset: 5:35pm

Fabric Dyeing Workshop pt. 1

We had our first day of our fabric dyeing workshop today - it was a lot of fun! I'm really excited to see how my fabric will turn out.

For the workshop we got a booklet that explained the process as well as "recipe cards" so we could make certain colours - or in our case - a rainbow of colours.
We started out making a basic rainbow that involved using 12 cups and mixing various amounts of 3 colours into them (red, blue, yellow). Some people used different shades of red, blue and yellow but for the first batch I stuck with true red/etc.

For our second batch we were encouraged to do our own thing (ie: more rainbows, doing mixes with two colours or making batches of specific colours). I chose to do another 12 cup rainbow but I used hot pink, bright blue and yellow. I'd like to do another one using a lighter blue.

As you can tell from the pictures - we uses plastic beer cups. They seemed to be large enough to fit our dye and our fabric (we were using an eighth of a yard - ie: a "fat eighth"). Some of the fabrics might have a kind of tie-dyed/marbled/mottled look depending on how much you scrunch and fold the fabric into the cup.

Tomorrow we're going to go back and rinse/fix the dyes and then start on more experimental things (ie: stretching a piece of fabric, putting dye on and then sprinkling salt on the dye, painting with the dyes etc).

It's all a great experiment and a lot different than what I'm used to with kool aid dyeing.

I'll update tomorrow with our results once I get home (and have a nap!).


Temperature: -27C
Sunrise: 10:46am
Sunset: 5:31pm

Dyeing Results

I took my swift and ball winder to sewing tonight to re-skein my newly dyed yarn. One of the reasons I did this was because we have good tables to clamp everything to (we only have a crappy card table here and it wobbles) and another reason is because I'm in a sewing funk. I have about a jillion projects on the go but don't feel like working on any of them. I'm getting a few new sewing books so hopefully that will help (they should be in the mail any day now!)

Re-skeining is my least favourite part about dyeing yarn (tedious!!) but it's SO rewarding when that blobbly skein turns into something really awesome. The skein on the right was a bit of an experiment - I was using powdered Ukrainian egg dye and I noticed it did funky things when I put it in the water (some spread out, some sunk, some sort of fizzled) so I put my skein in some water and just tapped dye on top of the water and let it do it's thing. I need to get some more yarn so I can fully try out my Ukrainan dyes. My mum's friend sent me one package of each colour.


Temperature: -34C
Sunrise: 11:03am
Sunset: 5:12pm

A Little Bit of Yarn Dyeing

This is what I've been up to:

I always hate the way the yarn looks before it has been reskeined so I try not to lose faith until then ;-)

I haven't done any knitting in a few weeks now.. I don't know why, I just haven't felt like pulling it out. That's one reason why I decided to dye some yarn because then I at least felt like I was doing something. My Cricut has been getting some action lately too but it's all a surprise :-)

Other than that, things have been pretty quiet around here. We've been spending most of our evenings watching tennis (ok, evening to us is 11pm and later!) and that's pretty much it. A typical evening looks like this:
I get home at 11pm from work. Go on the computer or do Cricut stuff until 1/1:30am when the tennis comes on. We watch the tennis until it's over or I flake out and go to bed (the second part is usually the case!).

Fun times at my house, I tell ya!

Temperature: -35C (feels like -47C - !!!!)
Sunrise: 11:17am
Sunset: 4:58pm

Dyed Yarn and Needle Felting!

I've finally gotten around to taking pictures of my latest dyeing. I'm not too happy with the pictures though - it's been overcast for a few days now so it was hard to get accurate colours. I did some photoshop work and they're as close as I can get them (I hate editing colours in photos, sort of feels like cheating). The red skeins have a lot more pink and orange in them than it shows.

I've also started some more elaborate needle felting (branching out from the inuksuks I've been doing!). I'm planning on running a needle felting workshop this summer so I figured I'd better get some example pieces done. I've ordered all my supplies and a few books (more examples and I'd love to do some 3D animals!). I'm getting really excited! For the people that have been reading from the beginning, one of my first posts (or was it my first?) was about the craft-y stuff I did at the art festival last summer - that is where I'll be running the workshop. Normally the workshop you run is related to the art you have in the gallery but since I can't really think of a good photography workshop I got the OK to do a needle felting one.

I got another BSJ done the other day but forgot to take a picture of it earlier. It's A LOT smaller than the previous one I made. I'm almost wondering if it'll be too small for an actual baby? If all else fails it can go on a doll!

Temperature: -3C (feels like -7C)
Sunrise: 5:19am
Sunset: 12:29am

Knitting Content (and lots of it!)

Well, I've been a bit busy on the knitting front again. About a week or so ago I got a big box from Knit Picks with my order of "Bare" yarn (in fingering and worsted weight). I planned to dye up some yarn for my Secret Pal (and mys
elf). I got four skeins done and now I have to decide whether I want to send all four to her or not - I'm thinking I will since I have plenty of yarn left to dye. All that's left is to think of names for the yarns - I already have all my little tags printed out!

I also have quite a few pairs of slippers knit up (four to be exact!). I'm in the process of embellishing them so I'll post them as they're completely finished. Right now I have one pair finished. I've been wanting to do embroidery on my felted things for a really long time now so I had a look around Ravelry to see if anyone had done something similar. I found some really awesome FO's out there. This first pair is just an experiment to see how my free-hand embroidery skills are (I've only done cross stitch before). I'm actually really pleased with how they turned out.

I bought two sets of shoe stretchers (women's size 5-8 and women's size 9-11) and they have totally changed my slipper blocking! I used to stuff them full of shopping bags and put elastics around them to keep their shape then, a few weeks ago I made duct tape forms of my feet (stuffed them with shopping bags) but those didn't work as well and didn't keep their shape when stuffed into a stubborn slipper.
Shoe stretchers are BRILLIANT. The little black slippers went from a women's size 8ish (maybe even smaller, they wouldn't fit properly onto my size 9 feet) to a comfortable size 9 - the heel is in the proper spot, my toes aren't stretching out the ends - AWESOME! I'm blocking a pair of felted clogs that got very small in only one run-through in the washer. With my incredible shoe stretchers, they've gone from being teeny-tiny to adult size. Can you tell I'm totally impressed? They give the slippers/clogs a really nice shape to them too.

My next big excitement is about the BSJ (baby surprise jacket). I got the pattern from a lovely lady on Knitty quite a while ago and for the life of me couldn't wrap my head around it (I'm not so good at reading a pattern and then knowing in my head what it should look like). I have to say, I was really embarrassed I couldn't figure this pattern out. Anyway, I bought the BSJ video done by Meg Swansen and I totally got how to knit it. I ended up doing a "trail run" and using some scrap kitchen cotton and it took me about 12hrs. I'm totally impressed with this pattern and how it turned out that I think this might become my default baby sweater pattern - I love the fact that you only have to sew two seams and it's all in one piece (hello my languishing trellis baby sweater I'm looking at you!).

Anyway! That's my big update for now! Anyone with good ideas for spring-y names for that yarn, leave a comment!

Oh! As of today I've been in Inuvik for 5 years! Whoa!

Temperature: -13C
Sunrise: 6:58am
Sunset: 10:52pm

Easter Egg Dying Experiment

It's the that time of year - the time of year you can get Easter egg dyes and cheap! Today I went out to the drugstore (the only store in town that I know carried the kits) and bought 20 kits. The girls at the store gave me a funny look when I told them what I was using the dye for ("What? That'll work?" was their reply). Even at a discount the kits were more expensive than they could've been but they came out to almost the price of two packets of kool aid (and you get 6 pellets!).

I had some Elann Peruvian Highland wool in white that I decided to use (I ordered some KnitPicks bare a few days ago). The kits came with blue, purple, yellow, orange, pink and green. The purple doesn't really turn out purple unless you add a bit of the pink to it and then it turns a really nice shade (if you add pink to the blue, it turns a really dark bluey-purple). All in all, I think my little experiment turned out really good. The colours are a lot different than how kool aid turns out (I think the colours are a lot more vivid).

Here are the results:

Number one is my favourite and number four is my least favourite. When I was dying #4 I thought I grabbed a pink pellet but it was orange. I don't think I can really over dye it since orange doesn't really go with anything (I keep forgetting and putting orange next to purple - yuck!!!). Anyone like orange and blue?

Temperature: -29C
Sunrise: 8:29am
Sunset: 9:32pm

Kool Aid Fun!

Got some knit picks colour your own in a swap this week and have done some dyeing. I went and bought 20 packages of kool aid at the grocery store and the lady was shocked to find out I wasn't going to drink it haha

The left one is some Gjestal Naturgarn no. 1 and the last three are knit picks. The only one that didn't really photograph true to colour is the right hand one. It has a lot more pink in it. Oh well and the left one has a bit more orange. I'm excited to see how these will knit up. Haven't been doing much knitting. The weather was nice up until a few days ago so we were still spending time outside. Went swimming in the lake on Monday (SO nice!) and on Tuesday I went out fishing with my brother (and basically went swimming again since I had to go rescue his hook from a rock ledge) I ended up catching a 4lb jackfish though - biggest one we've caught all summer. If I wasn't so sick of gutting jackfish I might've kept it to cook for everyone but we just let it go.

That's my update! I have one more skein of Naturgarn left so I might go and dye that. I'm trying to figure out the best way to get really vibrant colours (the colours look extra vibrant in the pictures but they aren't as vibrant as I'd like).


Sunrise - 3:44am
Sunset - 2:06am

Temperature - 11C (overcast)