This was, as usual, a busy, vibrant, productive meeting. Some
members, like our visitor, had not done any acid dyeing before but all were keen
to achieve success, learn and produce attractively dyed yarn for their, mainly,
weaving projects.
Apart from getting our project yarns dyed, protecting the
laminate floor was an aim of this event, if we were ever to be allowed to do
this again.
With this in mind, preparation began some time ago, saving
newspapers and sorting out protective sheets for the floor and table tops.
The first stage, after preparing the area, was to mix our
dyes from our own supplies or those bought for the guild resources. The dye
shade cards produced a couple of years ago along with ‘The Guild of Long Draw
Spinners’, came in useful when deciding the proportions of colours to mix for a
required shade.
Dianne to the rescue. Dianne, thankfully had a whole new pot,
more than she needed for her own project. Face saved, time to get on! Such a
relief!
We had been given saucepans and steamers by one of our
members, sadly unable to come, others brought their own. A cooking range full
of these utensils meant that we all got our dye colours set in two 45 minute
sessions with time for a quick rinse before transportation home.
There was time left to relax and spin, knit or natter and
look at what the non-dyers had brought.
Su had dyed her tops at home and brought them along for us
to see (wonder what they will become?)
What became of the missing fixative?
It was there all along….migrated and invisible, obviously
feeling more comfortable in a tray of containers similar to itself, rather than
with those messy, smelly dye powders.
