Our annual dyeing day

The first such session at our new venue Flitwick Village Hall.

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.

Oh Dear!!!!! Where was the fixative? It was there each times the equipment boxes to be brought on the day were checked. Two searches revealed no sign of it! Embarrassed chairperson!

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?)

Hopefully, the dyed dried yarns will be revealed at our next get together.

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.